


Offstage (Whipster #2)

by Dusk Peterson (duskpeterson)



Series: Michael's House [2]
Category: Original Work
Genre: 1910s, Alternate Universe - 1910s, Alternate Universe - 20th Century, Alternate Universe - America, Alternate Universe - Historical, Alternate Universe - Industrial Revolution, Alternate Universe - Original, Alternate Universe - Prostitution, Bisexual Male Character(s), Black Character, Bromance, Character of Color, Class Differences, Class Issues, Ethical Issues, Friendship, Gay Character of Color, Gay Male Character(s), Gen, Historical slash, Homophobia, M/M, Male Friendship, Multi, Original Fiction, POV Character of Color, Poverty, Prostitution, Queer Gen, Rape Recovery, Recovery, Romantic Friendship, Sadism, Slash, Theater - Freeform, abuse issues, abuse recovery, don't need to read other stories in the series, gen - Freeform, original gen, original slash subplot, queerplatonic, spirituality
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-06
Updated: 2020-10-06
Packaged: 2021-03-08 01:47:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 28,789
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26857678
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/duskpeterson/pseuds/Dusk%20Peterson
Summary: "It was when Michael's voice went flat and his face drained of expression that Janus would begin to worry."It is intended as the model pleasure house, the one that will transform the manner in which male prostitution is conducted in the Kingdom of Vovim. But Michael's House is facing ruin – unless one of the partners falls back on old ways.As Janus struggles to rein in the destructive tendencies of his friend Michael, a new patron appears on the scene: one whose appearance will pull back the curtains on a charade that has long fooled Janus.Boilerplate warning for all my stories + my rating system.
Relationships: Original Male Character & Original Male Character, Original Male Character/Original Male Character
Series: Michael's House [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/194387
Kudos: 3
Collections: A Whisper to the  Dark Side, Beside(s) Sex, Chains: The Powerfic Archive, Historical Fic, Queer Characters Collection





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> _**Author's note:** This is the second story in _Whipster _, the first volume in the Michael's House series. You don't need to read the other stories in the series to understand this one._
> 
> _**Content note:** The background storyline of _Whipster_ deals with the ethical issues surrounding youth prostitution in a fantasy setting based on the 1910s. The novel has no onscreen sex and little onscreen violence. The primary focus of the story is on the interactions between the adult characters._

_The year 449, the tenth month._ _(The year 1911 Clover by the Old Calendar.)_  


> "I am nearly satisfied in my own mind that the children of the streets taken, say at eight years of age, and kept till, say twenty-one, would, by judicious management and the utilisation of their strength and capacity, amply supply all their own wants, and would, I think, be likely to turn out thoroughly good and capable members of the community."
> 
> —General William Booth: _In Darkest England and The Way Out_ (1890).

  
**CHAPTER ONE**

Janus Roe had spent the morning in the manner he had been taught by his parents, attending temple and theater. On his way down Theater Avenue, he passed other gentlemen and ladies on their way to week-break worship, among them a young woman whose brother he had known at university, and whom he had twice escorted to the theater. He lifted his hat to the lady and her parents but did not pause for conversation. By now, much of the Parkside district had heard what occupation Lord Roe's nephew had chosen, and Janus had no desire to risk another snub. 

He very nearly walked into his parents. They had decided to attend the late worship rather than the dawn worship as they usually did. He quickly slipped back into the crowd of gentlemen and ladies milling outside the temple, who were treating this weekly rite more as a chance to socialize than as an opportunity for reverence. He looked down the street, wondering whether he could make it in time to the only other temple left on Theater Avenue. Then, on impulse, he slipped into the theater next door. 

Like most of the playhouses on the avenue, it was an old temple theater, and in fact it was the only theater in the city to retain tenuous connections with its original house of worship. Janus had attended performances there with his parents on many occasions after temple. The ancient sacred plays were solemnly performed, politely applauded with the mere tapping of feet, and reviewed the following week in the kingdom's best religious magazines. Janus, who had seen paintings of the rituals that had accompanied sacred performances in the previous century – bowing and tears and spontaneous chants from the worshippers – gathered that performances had been more lively in the past than they were now. As a child, he had usually slept through the plays. 

Nothing, therefore, prepared him for what he encountered that morning. It had not occurred to him that, since most of the capital's gentlemen and ladies were ensconced in temples at this hour, the theater owners would take this opportunity to throw their doors wide open to the city's lesser classes. 

Janus felt uncomfortably conspicuous in his morning suit and top hat, along with the gloves and gold-tipped walking stick that he carried. He could not even see any members of the mid-class in this crowd; everyone here seemed to be of the common class. Indeed, they seemed to be the most common of commoners. Even before the screens had been pulled back to reveal the players, the spectators were already hooting and shouting rude jokes and jumping up and down in applause. Janus, politely tapping his feet as the gas footlights were lit, began to wonder whether he would be able to hear the play at all. 

This did not prove to be a problem. The play was a bawdy comedy, and the players screamed out their lines with gusto. The play featured a man who had fallen in love with his best friend – another man his own age –and who spent the play pitifully weeping as he clutched his friend, begging to be violated by the other man. Even though Janus had, in the past year, heard every bawdy joke in the Kingdom of Vovim, he felt his face turn warm as the principal player tried increasingly desperate measures to attract his friend's love. By the end of the play, the principal player was garbed in dress and apron, with a wig of long golden curls that clashed with his full beard. 

The audience around Janus was prostrate with hilarity. Amidst their final lewd jokes, Janus slipped out onto the street, breathing deeply as though he had been smothering from manufactory smoke. 

The last of the morning's worshippers were leaving the temple. Janus watched a minute, saw that his parents were already far into the park across the street, and finally walked up the steps to the temple entrance, pausing only to slip a coin into the proffered cap of a blind beggar by the door. 

Stepping under the storey-high plaque displaying the temple code of honor, Janus entered the atrium. The only person there was an old woman, kindling a fire before an altar to one of the lesser gods. Janus paused to light his own fire before the goddess of healing; then he frowned and reached over to wipe the dust from the altar. 

A mother and young boy were leaving the central sanctuary, the boy chatting brightly about how it had felt to have the hell-god's chains upon him, while his mother tried vainly to impress upon him the solemnity of the occasion. Janus waited until they were gone before entering the sanctuary. 

Sunlight fell from the windows of the sky-blue dome onto the mosaic floor depicting the tortures of hell. He looked a while at the two altars, standing under the light of the dome's highest window; then he went over and stretched himself out upon Mercy's altar. It was soft with bedding and cushions. He lay there for a while as his mind wandered, without any prompting on his part, to the comforts of his childhood: the quiet conversations, the easy living, the civilized surroundings. 

After a few minutes, he forced himself to move to the other altar. As he placed over himself the chains that would bind him to the rack of hell's High Master, an image came into his mind, unbidden, of the scene he had left behind in the theater. That would be hell for him, he realized with a shudder: to spend day after day in the company of such people. He saw again the player with the woman's wig upon his head, kissing the feet of the other man, and he had to bite his lip to keep from groaning. 

By the time he left the temple, the theater entrance was crowded again, this time with gentlemen and ladies attending the solemn after-temple performance. Ignoring them, Janus turned southwards and began to walk down the street toward the bridge that would take him to the Riverbend district. He found himself wondering, as he walked, why it was that, if he enjoyed so much the comfort of Mercy's bed, he had chosen to live his life on Hell's rack. 

Then he returned to the whorehouse he owned. 

o—o—o

Janus entered Michael's House for Boys through the kitchen door and took the staircase up to the old servants' wing, where his bedroom lay in what had once been an elegant mansion, back in the days when the Riverbend district had not yet been conquered by manufactories and poverty. He paused in his room only long enough to change into a lounge suit; then he went downstairs to check on Lann. 

The boy's bedroom had been moved to the ground floor so that he could watch the other boys in the inner courtyard, and so that the boys could easily visit him at times when they were not occupied with their duties. The house had not yet opened for business on this day, but most of the boys were already in place in the courtyard, as multi-colored as a peacock's tail in their uniforms of scarlet and emerald and other bright colors. Hasan flashed Janus a smile as his twenty-two-year-old employer passed; then the boy turned back to his discussion with a couple of younger prostitutes on how to keep a patron sated and satisfied. 

Lann was asleep. Janus was pleased to see from the copious ashes in the firestead that the other boys, who liked Lann, had kept the fire well lit throughout the chilly morning of early autumn. Now, in the early afternoon hours, the fire had been allowed to die down, and the room was cool. 

Janus placed his hand on Lann's forehead. It was as hot as a blazing fire. The boy murmured something incoherent in his sleep; as Janus adjusted the bedcovers, he saw that the fourteen-year-old was clutching at his groin, though whether it was from pain or fear was not clear. He did not wake as Janus wiped his forehead with a wetted rag from the nearby chamber pitcher. His sheets were soaked with sweat. 

Janus emerged from the room some time later to discover that the business day had begun at Michael's House. A couple of patrons were already in the courtyard, eyeing the available boys, while a third was just emerging from the entrance hall. Seeing him, Janus was tempted to turn back to Lann's room, but it was too late: the young man in the doorway had already sighted Janus. 

"Ah. Roe." The young man's voice held no surprise. "I'd heard that you were working at one of these houses. Find a boy for me, if you will. And be quick about it – I'm due at a tea party at the King's Grounds in two hours." 

There was no hostility in his voice. Worse, his tone was indifferent. He did not even bother to look at Janus after the first couple of words; his gaze swung back to the boys as he issued his orders. 

Janus said, in a voice that he knew must sound strangled, "I'll see whether my partner is available to assist you." Then he forced himself to walk past the young man to the entrance hall. 

At the far end of the corridor that served as an entranceway, Wyll was slumped against the doorpost, taking Lann's place today as doorkeeper. His expression held the frustration of a long-suffering youth who has been preparing himself all his life for this ultimate sacrifice of having to watch the door while other boys were invited into beds. He raised his head hopefully as Janus came into view; then he slumped again as Janus walked through the open doorway on the right, into Michael's office. 

Michael was standing near the door, dressed in his usual high-necked pullover, jacket, and trousers, all a blinding white. He was on the point of closing the office door. The reason for this became clear as Janus slipped inside and saw Hasan's furious face. 

"God's torment, Michael – I don't see why you should halt me working an hour or three more during the day!" cried Hasan. 

"Because if you work three extra hours for a patron, the other patrons will want their boys to work three extra hours." Michael's voice was flat as he walked across the room and picked up the pen he had left upon the chest-high speaker's stand where he did his record-keeping. "Your contract does not permit you to work any other hours than Mr. Roe and I say." 

"My cursed contract—" 

"Is still valid for the next fortnight. After that, you may sell yourself for however many hours a day you wish." 

Hasan did not appear to notice the insult. He was a slender boy who looked older than his age, and often acted older as well. He crashed his fist onto the stained glass that divided the office from the courtyard, and Janus had a momentary vision of shattered glass. 

"You need the money!" Hasan protested. "Michael, even the youngest boy here can figure that! Why not take benefit of your house's assets—" 

"Master Hasan," Michael said, "this conversation is over. Return to your duties." 

Janus looked quickly over to Michael but saw that his hands were empty. The whoremaster was staring down at a list of numbers, apparently oblivious to Hasan's fury. 

Hasan seemed inclined to continue the conversation, but he glanced at Janus, who shook his head slightly. Sighing, Hasan moved to the doorway, muttering something about whoremasters who go penniless as the result of high principles. 

Michael waited until Hasan had reached the courtyard before throwing down his pen. He looked at Janus, his expression settling, after a moment of apparent indecision, into a glare. 

"Don't say it," he said. "I know I should have better control over him than I do." 

"I was about to congratulate you on your patience," Janus said mildly. 

Michael snorted. "There's nothing worse than a boy who has discovered he's a man and wants to put that new-found knowledge to use. And who has realized that his whoremaster is only a year older than he is and can be crossed. I'm tempted to release him from his contract a fortnight early." 

"He won't leave," said Janus. "Anyway, we still need to finish our plans for his coming-of-majority feast." He glanced back through the doorway. From where he stood, he could see a sliver of the courtyard. The young patron had taken his watch from his vest pocket and was staring at it with dark impatience. 

"Michael," said Janus, "a patron would like your advice on which boy to buy." 

"So I overheard." Michael stared down at the papers on his stand. "Who is he?" 

Janus felt his mouth grow dry and tried to ignore it. "His name's Benson." 

Michael lifted his eyes toward Janus. The whoremaster's face had gone blank, as it often did in his moments of greatest tension. "Thomas Benson? From university?" 

Janus nodded slowly. For a moment Michael was still; then he strode over to the entrance hall. "Wyll!" he said in an abrupt, sharp voice. 

Wyll's footsteps thundered swiftly forward. He skidded to a halt in front of Michael, his eyes bright with anticipation. 

"Do you see that patron?" Michael asked, pointing to the young man, who had turned away to look at the bevy of boys in the courtyard. Wyll nodded. 

"I want you to go to that patron," Michael continued, "and tell him that, in light of his past friendship with Mr. Roe, I am granting him a free session. Take him into your room and use your finest skill to raise his desire. Bring him to a higher peak than he has ever reached before." 

"And?" Wyll was grinning. He liked this sort of game, one at which he was particularly adept. 

"Leave him there. Tell him that, in light of his abrupt end to his friendship with Mr. Roe, your service to him must likewise terminate without warning." As Wyll laughed, Michael added, with emphasis, "Keep your door open a crack to the courtyard. If the patron causes trouble, don't just pull the bell-rope – call for help. You understand?" 

"He'll be no trouble," said Wyll, still grinning. "No trouble at all." 

He turned away, only to be caught tight by Michael. The seventeen-year-old looked back anxiously, as though fearing that he was about to be deprived of a gift. 

"And Wyll," Michael said lightly, "be quick about it. The patron has a party to attend at the King's Grounds in two hours." 

o—o—o

As Michael shut the door again, Janus said, "You shouldn't do this. His family is rich and influential, and he could become a long-standing patron if you treated him well." 

"That type of patron we don't need," Michael replied tersely. "Did you check on Lann as you came in?" 

Janus experienced an inner struggle – he knew that Michael could ill afford to lose any type of patron at this date. Finally he surrendered and replied, "Yes. He seems no better than yesterday. Michael, I don't think we can wait any longer for the quarterly inspection by the city healer. Lann needs to see a healer now." 

Michael nodded without looking up from the records he was perusing at his stand. "I had a healer visit while you were at temple. A woman, so she doesn't have many patients or charge much, but she has a good reputation in the Riverbend district." 

Janus's body went still. "What did she say?" 

"That Lann is lucky to have lived this long. She says that, if the city inspector had considered it worth his while to inspect our young doorkeeper, he would have learned that Lann had five diseases. Four can be cured, with a certain amount of trouble, but the fifth is the Damnation." 

"The Damnation." Janus sat down heavily; fortunately there was a chair nearby to catch his fall. "The Damnation. Oh, gods. Oh, Mercy and Hell." 

After a moment more, he began to recite softly the hell-god's curse against those who harm children. Michael let him continue for some time before commenting mildly, "You're probably cursing a dead man, you know." 

Janus shut his mouth. After a while he said, "Whoever gave this to Lann knew what he was risking by bedding prostitutes – he was a grown man. But Mercy's tears, Michael, Lann's only fourteen! To die so young, and in so terrible a manner. . . ." 

Michael sighed and set down his pen. His sigh sounded calculated, down to the final breath of air. "The healer says she may be able to help Lann." 

"What? How?" Janus found that he was on his feet again, his fists clenching from the suspense. 

"The Yclau healers have developed a new drug. They claim that it cures most cases of the Damnation, or at least masks the symptoms – the healer wasn't prepared to commit herself to any promise that it would work." 

"But it's a chance. Even if it only makes his death less painful . . . Michael, we must get this drug!" 

"Janus," Michael said in the patient voice he sometimes adopted. "The drug has to be imported from Yclau. It's expensive." 

Janus felt his heart throbbing with a slow, hard beat. "How expensive?" 

Michael told him. Janus was silent a minute before saying, "How much of our savings is left?" 

In answer, Michael gestured toward the top of the speaker's stand. Janus came over beside him and was unsurprised to discover that Michael had been inspecting their current ledger-book. 

Under ordinary circumstances, Janus, who kept the books, would have known in an instant what their financial circumstances were. But he had busy for the past week, caring for Lann, and so Michael had been the one who paid the mid-month debts. Janus scanned the long columns thrice, searching for an escape from the final figure, before he said, "You overpaid the tax." 

"No, they've raised the taxes again on pleasure houses that don't have municipal sponsorship. The prime minister is trying to drive as many houses of boys out of business as he can without appearing to contravene the provisions of the Pleasure House Act." 

"All he'll end up doing is killing independent houses like this, which are trying to provide the boys with a better life. Houses of prostitution like Outram's will still exist, because they have municipal sponsorship." 

Michael shrugged as he closed the ledger. "We're unique, in any case. All of the other pleasure houses are waiting to see whether our business thrives or fails before they change the way they operate." He added, as though in afterthought, "The city bookies are placing odds twenty to one that we'll be broke by the end of autumn. I'm tempted to buy a share in favor of the wager." 

"Michael . . ." Janus murmured. 

His breath caught as Michael slammed his fist onto the stand. "Janus," said Michael in a flat voice that seemed oddly dissonant with his violence, "we need to admit that this isn't working. The patrons aren't interested in coming to a pleasure house where they're not allowed to blatantly mistreat the boys. They don't like the fact that we have no assistants or servants, so we must stay closed for half the hours of each day. They don't like being told that they must wear sheaths and that they can't keep drilling their whammers into the boys if the boys begin to cry. Above all, they don't like coming to a place that's run by a commoner who was once a whore." 

"You're wrong about that," Janus said quickly. "Michael, you were the most famous prostitute of your time. Your name draws patrons here. . . ." 

"Your name is what draws them here. They come here because they know that this house is financially backed by Lord Roe's nephew, which gives this place a certain veneer of respectability. And then they walk through the front door, and what do they see? A termite-eaten mansion that's falling to bits because we can't afford to renovate it, boys who are only semi-trained because you and I spend most of our time trying to figure out how to pay for the winter fuel, and a doorkeeper who's about to die of the Damnation because his workmaster waited over a year before bothering to pay a healer to look at him!" His voice ended on a raised note, as though he had just remembered the sounds that should accompany his fury. 

Janus let out his breath slowly. His own anger forgotten, he began to place his hand over where his friend's hand gripped the edge of the speaker's stand as though it were a weapon. Then a faint memory of the womanish theatrical player stopped him. 

Michael did not appear to notice the aborted gesture. He was staring into space with a blank look that was more terrible than thunder. 

"Michael," Janus said softly, "you can't blame yourself for that. You tried over and over to make the city healer inspect Lann, even though the boy doesn't work as a prostitute for us. And it wouldn't have made any difference if we'd learned about this when Lann first arrived here last year. There's no cure for the Damnation." 

"There may be one now." Michael continued to stare expressionlessly into space. "And I can't afford to pay for the drug to cure him. I may not even have enough money to put food into the mouths of our boys next month." 

Janus sighed as he stepped back out of reach. "I'll see whether I can persuade my father to loan us the money." 

"You've tried that before. You'll have no more success this time than in the past. Your father thinks that any suffering which whores undergo is well-deserved for their immoral acts." 

"I'll go to my uncle, then." 

"Your uncle is doing his best, through his legislation, to get places like this shut down. Do you really think he'd risk letting a rumor spread that he'd given money to a house of boys?" 

"This is a house _for_ boys." 

"It's no different from the other pleasure houses in the eyes of the world. You know that." 

Janus felt his fists begin to clench again. "There must be a solution!" 

He looked over at Michael. The other young man had regained his expression; he was frowning down at the ledger, his brow creased. 

Janus said slowly, "You've already thought of something." 

"You won't like it." 

"I'd be willing to consider anything at this point – provided that you don't increase the boys' hours," Janus added hastily. "They work too long each day as it is." 

"No," said Michael, "I wasn't considering anything that involved selling the boys." 

During the silence that ensued, Janus heard the roar of a man's voice, followed by a chorus of laughter in the courtyard, not only from the boys, but from patrons who had overheard what had taken place and were amused by the outcome. Two minutes later the front door slammed, and Janus, turning to look out the window, caught sight of Benson's face, twisted with rage. The man paused only long enough to hastily button several parts of his clothing that were hanging loose. Then he made his way down the porch stairs and out of sight, muttering loudly as he went. Janus thought he heard Benson say something about making sure this place was shut down for false marketing. 

Janus finally found his voice again and said, "You can't do that." When Michael did not reply, he repeated in a louder voice, "You can't do that!" 

"Janus," said Michael in his patient voice, "I am, as you say, the most famous whore of my time. Your eyes would goggle if you knew how much men used to pay for me. How much more do you think someone would pay if I came briefly out of retirement to give a repeat performance?" 

Janus tightened his lips before saying, "Don't be short-sighted, Michael. You're right that being a former prostitute has made it difficult for patrons to trust that you run a high-class pleasure house. You've only managed this feat because you've always presented yourself as something close to a gentleman. How can you even consider throwing away your reputation?" 

"It would only be with one man—" 

"Who would tell the rest of the city what you'd done. You know that, Michael. If you submitted yourself to another man, no one in the capital would be able to resist telling all of his friends—" 

"I was never the one who submitted." Michael's voice was cool. "I defied convention, even back then." 

"That was when you were a boy. It may have amused your old patrons to play that you were in charge, but everyone knew that you weren't. You were a powerless boy, unable to prevent any man from raping you if he truly wanted to." He paused, but Michael did not contradict his statement. Michael could not contradict his statement, they both knew. Janus continued, "Now you're a man, and if you go to bed with another man, one of you must truly submit to the other. No man of sense would willingly admit that he has submitted to a grown man, so if the patron gossips about you, he'll tell the world that you submitted to him. Whether or not it's true, the world will believe it. It makes a good story: Michael the Whore finally bested by one of his betters." 

Janus's voice had turned bitter. He could imagine his own parents spreading such a tale, triumphant that the corrupt youth whom their only child had befriended had finally received his comeuppance. 

After a while, Michael said, "I have no choice." 

"You'll destroy this house if you do it, Michael. You won't be able to help Lann if we're thrown out of business, and no one will ever patronize this place again if they know that it's run by a man who has served as wife to another man." 

He used the old-fashioned epithet deliberately, to see whether he could elicit a reaction from Michael. The reaction was delayed; Janus sometimes wondered whether Michael's mind moved at intervals ten seconds slower than the rest of humanity. But eventually Michael winced and looked away. "What else can we do?" the whoremaster asked. 

"You know what we can do. The problem with this house is that we don't have municipal sponsorship, so we have to pay high taxes, as well as expenses the city would cover if we were official. We could receive sponsorship if we changed the purpose of this house. . . ." 

Michael turned his head to gaze levelly at him. "Is it time for our quarterly discussion of this?" 

Janus fell silent. They had decided, shortly after the house first opened for business, that their friendship would not survive if Janus offered daily reminders to Michael that he did not believe they should be prostituting boys. They also agreed that Janus's conscience would not permit him to remain silent on this matter. The compromise they had reached was to confine their discussions to a quarterly quarrel, which would take place shortly before the city sent its inspectors to ascertain that the boys of Michael's House were not spreading diseases to the patrons or engaging in other illegal activities. 

Perhaps to call it a quarrel was too strong. Michael never seemed affected by Janus's arguments; he simply listened silently to Janus's impassioned speeches, and then stated that he was not a high dreamer like Janus. The most that Michael thought he could give whore-boys was a better life, not a different life. 

Now Janus said, "It would solve our financial problems, Michael." 

Michael shook his head. "Every boy within these walls would disappear the moment that I announced I was turning this place into an orphanage. These are whores, Janus, not proper boys. Whores don't belong in an orphanage. And even if you were right" – he forestalled Janus's further protests – "it wouldn't help in this situation. Lann needs the drug now, and it would take months for us to go through the paperwork to become a home for boys. Even assuming that the city guild-leaders would allow such a home to be run by an ex-whore, which they certainly wouldn't." 

"Hell-curse you, Michael! If you'd just broaden your vision—" 

He stopped; Michael had raised his hand in warning. Looking over Janus's shoulder, Michael said in a cool voice, "We're busy." 

Janus turned. Hasan had opened the door and was watching them with a bemused expression. He responded to Michael's remark by raising his eyebrows. "I had mind you might want to be knowing that a new patron has arrived. One who hasn't been here 'fore." 

"Whichever boy Wyll left at the front entrance will take care of him." Michael's voice turned from cool to frigid. 

"Oh, for sure." Hasan's voice was bland. "Regrets for having disturbed you." 

He had almost closed the door when Janus, uneasiness pricking him, asked, "Who's watching the entrance?" 

He caught sight of the flash of Hasan's grin. "Evan," said the youth. He closed the door. 

Michael and Janus exchanged looks. Then they were competing with each other to reach the office door first. 

Michael won the race; he was halfway toward the house's front door before Janus even reached the entrance hall. Once he arrived at the hall, Janus halted and groaned at the scene before him. 

The new patron was perhaps fifty years of age, dressed in the clothes of the mid-class, and undistinguished in appearance except for a chest so broad that a player would have envied him. Pressed against that chest was fifteen-year-old Evan, who was standing on tiptoe, trying his best to smother the new patron with kisses. 

Janus sighed as he started forward again to help Michael. When Michael had brought Evan back with him one evening the previous year after attending to some business on Theater Avenue, Janus had protested at length that Evan was far too young and innocent to live his life as a whore. 

That had been before Janus had learned how Evan acted when in the presence of men. Michael had met Evan while taking a shortcut through a dark alley; the boy had launched himself at Michael without preliminary and had done a fair imitation of a rapist before regaining his sense of proper position long enough to state his price. The price was mere pennies; clearly, the only reason Evan sought money at all was because some long-ago patron had wisely advised Evan that he would attract more bed-mates if he placed a value upon himself. 

Placing a value upon himself was not something Evan was skilled at. He was the son of mid-class parents who were in despair over how to handle their son's expeditions of lust. Even keeping the boy at home every evening had not worked; Evan had simply seduced a lieutenant in the King's patrol, who had sternly reprimanded the parents for keeping their son a prisoner. The parents, sighting a solution that was one step above disaster, had hopefully allowed Evan to be courted by the lieutenant. For a while it had seemed that the boy had finally achieved what he wanted – which, it transpired, was not simply a bed-mate but a love-mate. 

But the lieutenant had been transferred to a foreign posting in Yclau, and so Evan had returned to haunting the alleys, eventually launching his latest attack on a young whoremaster who had experience enough to know how Evan's life was likely to end if he continued on his current path. It had not taken Michael much work to persuade Evan's parents that, if their son was determined to be a whore, he was better off living at Michael's House than selling himself in alleyways. 

"Good afternoon, sir," Michael was saying now as he peeled Evan off the new patron with a grip so tight that the boy gasped. Michael ignored him, adding, "I am Michael, proprietor of this establishment. If you would care to enter my office, I would be glad to discuss your needs." 

The patron – who did not seem to be worse for the wear for Evan's attack – smiled and nodded, accepting Michael's invitation that he should precede the whoremaster into his office. Michael followed behind, his grip still tight upon Evan. The whoremaster waited until the patron was safely inside the office; then he threw the boy against the corridor wall. 

Janus winced. Evan, on the other hand, seemed more curious than hurt. He stared up at Michael expectantly. Slamming his hands upon the wall on either side of the boy's head, Michael leaned forward and said, in a very low voice, "You will go to your room. You will take off your clothes and lie face-down on your bed. And you will wait for me to come and retrain you, since it appears that you did not learn anything from your initial training." 

For a moment, Evan simply stared. Then a joyful smile spread across his face. Clearly, nothing delighted him more than the thought of being raped by his whoremaster. 

Fortunately, Michael did not witness the smile; he had already turned away and entered the office. Janus hesitated, then closed the office door and turned round to Evan, who was smiling at the closed door. 

Suspicious, Janus leaned closer than Michael had. His nose wrinkled. He thought to himself, with an inward sigh, that there was a time when he would have concluded only that the boy was eating silver pot-herb, and would have been duly horrified. Those were the days of his naivete. 

He had fought Michael when the whoremaster calmly announced that he planned to give small doses of silver to any boy who was scheduled to undertake particularly painful acts. Janus, furious, had rifled through the diary of his great-grandfather, an army healer who had later become a councillor for the King in the days of the old monarchy, and who had been instrumental in the outlawing of silver. In that diary, Janus assumed, he would find evidence of the terrible effects of silver on its users. 

He found this evidence. And he also found passages which revealed that his great-grandfather had been accustomed to prescribing small doses of silver to battle-torn soldiers. Michael, when Janus confessed this news to him, had the grace not to laugh, but he acquired the habit of referring to the house's silver pot-herb as "our patent medicine." 

That was in the early days. Since that time, Janus had come to realize that boys eating silver would be the least of his worries. 

Evan continued to smile. His eyes stared at nothing in particular. Sighing outwardly now, Janus leaned forward and said, in a voice as low as Michael's had been, "Evan, if Michael discovers that you've been sucking sweetweed on the sly, he's likely to tear up your contract of apprenticeship. And then you won't be able to have sex with nearly as many men as you do now." 

The boy's eyes grew wide with shock, as though he had been doused with ice-cold water; his cream-colored skin actually drained of blood. Janus was never able to show as much strictness as Michael did. He patted Evan briefly on the shoulder and said, "Go back to your room and sleep it off. Michael won't disturb you; he was only trying to frighten you." He hoped this was true. 

He waited until the door of Evan's room was safely shut; then he glanced round the courtyard. No patrons were in sight at the moment. Wyll was lingering with some of the other boys, apparently inclined to join a card game. From the looks of it, money was being used as stakes. Janus sighed a third time and walked forward. 

Several minutes later, the young gamblers had been persuaded to devote their energies to an old-fashioned mime play. A pair of patrons who had wandered in were applauding their efforts – or at least their scanty costumes – while Wyll was safely posted at the entranceway again. Janus returned to the office. 

As he opened the door, he heard Michael ask, "And will you be staying in the capital for long, Mr. . . . ?" 

"Archy," said the new patron with a cheerful smile. "Just call me Archy; everyone does. My family isn't much for surnames." 

"Mr. Archibald," Michael replied in a cool tone. "Will you be visiting this city for long?" 

"Alas, no – this is the last day of my tour. I'll be taking the steamer back tomorrow at dawn—" He turned abruptly, as though suddenly aware that he was being watched from behind. 

"This is my business partner, Mr. Roe," said Michael. "Nephew to Lord Roe." 

"Oh?" The patron's tone revealed polite indifference. 

"Our prime minister." Michael's voice, as so often was the case when he spoke with patrons, sounded completely neutral. 

"Oh! It's an honor to meet you, sir." 

The patron seemed uncertain how to behave now, so Janus stepped forward and firmly shook arms with him. He was having difficulty understanding the man's speech, his accent was so thick, but there was something familiar about his face. "Have we met before, sir?" he asked. 

"Perhaps," said the patron, peering carefully at Janus. He was clean-shaven, with skin as white as Evan's had been when he lost color. "Didn't we pass each other on Theater Avenue this morning? I was there to visit the theaters. Not that I actually had enough nerve to walk into any of them," he confessed with a laugh. "They seemed a bit too . . . advanced for me. But I met a man on the avenue who appeared friendly, and I asked him what I should see on my last day in your capital. He said, 'The theaters, of course. And if you haven't seen it already, the King's palace has some of the most beautiful artwork in the kingdom. And once you're through touring that, visit Michael's House. It may not have all the frills that other pleasure houses possess, but you can be sure that whichever young man comes to your bed does so willingly.'" 

"It is somewhat dangerous," Michael replied, "to rely on recommendations offered on Theater Avenue. The place is filled with players whose favorite occupation is to gossip, often about matters of which they know little." He paused a moment to allow this statement to be absorbed. More than one of Michael's patrons had been disarmed by the whoremaster's apparent willingness to be honest. When the proper time had passed, he added, "But I am of course gratified that you evidently met one of our satisfied customers. I'm only sorry that your introduction to our hospitality was so abrupt." 

"A kiss is never unwelcome," said the patron brightly. "Mind you, he's a bit young for me." 

"Oh?" Michael did not sound distressed by this news – not that it was ever easy to tell what he was thinking when he spoke with patrons. Janus had stepped back, out of the patron's line of vision. In the bright afternoon light he could see Michael clearly: the eyes that said nothing, the mouth that was too relaxed to be a frown or a smile, and the body that remained in its neutral stance, with no gestures to reveal emotion. 

As for Janus, his opinion had just risen of the new patron. So many men arrived at this house demanding the youngest bed-mate possible – some even slyly indicated that they would pay extra for an underage boy. It was a relief to meet someone whose morals were apparently high enough that he would seek one of the older boys. 

"Well, sir," said Michael, "you are fortunate to have chosen this house, for we specialize in older boys. We have a number of boys close to their coming of majority—" 

"Older than that," the patron said without hesitation. "I like a bed-mate who has entered into the full fruits of his manhood." 

For the first time in the time they had been in business, it appeared that Michael was left speechless. He simply stared at the patron. Janus was the first to recover. He caught Michael's eye with a gesture, and mouthed, "Yclau." 

Something entered Michael's eyes then. He nodded, and turned his attention back to the patron. "I regret, sir, that we cannot meet your particular need." His voice was like a blade; he never bothered to be soothing to patrons who requested the unthinkable. "It is not the custom here in Vovim for full-grown men to sleep with other men." 

"No?" The patron's voice took on a note of surprise. He flicked a glance ever so slightly at Michael's body. 

"No," replied Michael firmly. 

"Oh," said the patron, nonplussed. "Well, in that case, of course I'd be willing to pay extra." 

"Sir . . ." 

But the patron ignored him; he was patting himself all over, as though he had forgotten where his pockets were located. "Ordinarily, you understand, you'd find me short of money," he said as he bent down to inspect his trousers. "This trip, brief though it is, took a decade's worth of my savings. But my mother presented me recently with a fedora. Its cut was in appalling taste, of course. I didn't want to hurt her feelings by rejecting her gift, so I sold it." His hand emerged from his breast pocket, clutching a roll of bills. 

Janus stared at the thick circle of bank-notes. "You sold a _hat_?" 

The patron turned his head to smile at Janus. "What my mother lacks in taste she makes up for in opulence." He turned back to the whoremaster and held out the notes, saying, "Will this do?" 

Janus's breath lay suspended in the air for a moment, but Michael merely said, in a voice as frigid as hell itself, "I wish you good luck in your search, sir, but I fear you will have a long hunt before you find any Vovimian man who is willing to submit his body to another man." 

"Submit?" The patron seemed amused now. "Bloody blades, I can't remember the last time I asked a man to submit to me. Or did I submit to him? I can't remember; we were too busy making love to notice such trivialities." 

There was a pause. Outside, a prolonged thumping of feet told Janus that the performance in the courtyard had reached its climax. He thought to himself that he should go to see whether the other patrons had made their choices, but nothing could have moved him from the office at this moment. 

Michael said softly, "Are you telling me, sir, that you would not object to submitting to another man?" 

"Not if it was the right man." The patron let his gaze roam quite frankly over Michael's body. 

In the courtyard, a chorus of requests called for a repeat performance. From the shouts, Janus gathered that matters were getting out of hand there – that the men wanted the boys to perform the play naked. Still he did not move; he was desperately trying to catch Michael's eye. 

Michael noticed him finally. He said quietly, "Will you excuse Mr. Roe and me for a minute, sir?" 

"Certainly." The patron, unfazed, slid off the clip holding the bills together and began counting them. 

Janus followed Michael through the door leading to the chilly stairwell in the servants' wing. Michael closed the door to the kitchen as they passed it, then proceeded to the foot of the steps. He did not go up the stairs; instead, he turned left and followed the side of the stairs till he reached a door in the wall supporting the steps. He opened it. 

The mansion held dozens of rooms; Janus had never been able to figure out why Michael had chosen a closet as his bedroom. Michael claimed that he had housed himself in the tiny storage space under the stairs because he could easily hear the bells in the office if any of the boys pulled their bell-ropes during the night. But Janus suspected that Michael would have chosen the room in any case. Something about it spoke of his personality. 

The room had only one source of light, a tiny hexagonal window that looked out upon the street in front of the house. Michael had covered the window with a sheet of newspaper. The ceiling slanted so sharply from the stairs above that it was only possible to stand up on the window side of the room. The closet was so small that nearly all of the floor space was taken up with a narrow steel cot. Michael kept all of his belongings under the cot or hung them from hooks on what little wall space he possessed. 

Michael was already on his knees, rummaging under the bed. Janus closed the door before saying, "Michael, please—" 

"Janus, this is perfect, don't you see?" Michael did not look up from his search. "The man's from Yclau – he won't slander me by claiming I submitted to him, because he thinks it's natural to submit to men. And he won't have time to gossip, because he's leaving for his homeland tomorrow. And even if he should drop word to someone between now and dawn, who would believe him? He's a foreigner. Everyone would assume he was telling tourers' tales." 

"But Michael, he may not like what you do to—" 

He stopped. Michael had risen from his knees. In his hand lay his stiff leather hunting crop. 

Michael said softly, "Most men do, I've found." 

The patron was awaiting them in the office. He did not seem in any way disturbed by the interval for the private conference. From the sounds coming from the courtyard now, Janus suspected that the men had not waited until they reached the boys' rooms before starting on their afternoon's pleasure. 

Michael paid no attention to the noise. "Mr. Archibald," he said as he slid the crop between his fingertips, "just how far are you prepared to submit?" 

The patron stared. Then he smiled.


	2. Chapter 2

Hasan came into Janus's room, bearing his life's belongings in his arms. 

He spread them out on Janus's bed, and they regarded the collection. Unlike some of the boys at Michael's House, Hasan had never wasted his percentage of his earnings on luxuries. Everything he owned consisted of his clothes and his presents from patrons. Hasan picked up a cut-glass bottle of carnation perfume and snorted at it. 

"Not at all the right gift for you," said Janus. 

"Certainly not," Hasan replied, setting the bottle aside. "My scent of choosing is sweet violet." 

Janus stared open-mouthed at him until Hasan laughed. "I was joking," said the boy. "You're simple to tease." 

Janus made an inarticulate noise at the back of his throat as a flush spread across his face. He focussed his attention on the one piece of outerwear on the bed: a commoners' suit, which Michael had bought Hasan a few days before as his leaving present. Janus had been surprised and pleased to discover that the suit was a sober brown. At present, Hasan wore bright yellow. 

"We're all grateful, you know." 

Startled out of his thoughts, Janus looked up. "What?" 

"We're grateful. The boys. We're grateful you paid for this place, even though you don't approve of boys whoring themselves." 

"I don't blame the boys," Janus said quickly. "What's happened to you isn't your fault. I blame—" He stopped just in time. 

"The whoremasters," Hasan finished quietly. "'Tisn't simple for Michael, either, you know. To be a whoremaster when he hates Outram so much." 

"I know." Janus saw in his mind a brief glimpse of Michael as he had been when he talked to the new patron, his face a blank memo. 

"I suppose I'm not telling you anything you don't already know," he told Hasan awkwardly, "but Michael . . . Well, he finds it difficult to express his feelings. They get stopped up inside him, as though they were in a bottle that won't open. If he doesn't show as much of his feelings to you and the other boys as he should, that's why." 

When he received no reply, he looked over at Hasan. The boy was fingering his new vest, his thoughts apparently focussed on the first street clothes he had owned since he became a prostitute. Finally he said, "Aye, Michael is hard to be knowing. Wouldn't we all be, if we'd gone through what he did? . . . See now, I have mind I'll just yield these to the other boys. Do you know who would be liking them?" He gestured to the pile of trinkets. 

They spent several minutes sorting through the showy, useless gifts as Janus felt his awkwardness increase. He had gotten along well with Hasan for the past year through the simple expedient of not talking with the boy about Michael. How else was he to handle the situation? He had not even known that Hasan existed before the boy turned up at the doorway of Michael's House, while Hasan, apparently, had heard detailed accounts of Janus since Michael first met him. Michael had never explained this anomaly, never bothered to tell Janus why he had kept secrets from Janus but not from Hasan. Janus had tried to put the matter out of his mind. 

As they reached the bottom of the pile of items to be discarded, Janus reached inside his jacket and drew out a book, which he tossed onto the bed. "Here's something else for you to add to the pile." 

Hasan picked up the leaving present, and his face lit up at once. "Oh, I've not seen this for years!" 

"You've read it?" said Janus, disconcerted. "I didn't know that Outram let his boys own books." 

"For sure not, but Michael read this to me. You lent a copy of it to him." 

"I'd forgotten about that," Janus said, sitting down on the bed. "He used to borrow my novels a lot. I suppose he needed a way to while away his spare hours." 

"At Outram's?" Hasan gave another snort. "He used to read to me when we were meant to be sleeping, using candle stubs I sneaked out of wastepaper bins. If we'd used the regular candles, Outram would have taken note, and we'd have paid for it." 

"You had no money." 

Hasan gave Janus the briefest of looks, and Janus flushed again. He often felt, when he was with Hasan, that he was ten years younger than the worldly-wise boy. It was just as well that he could soon treat Hasan as a man. 

In an attempt to regain familiar ground, Janus asked, "Where will you search for work?" 

"Oh, the stores, I figure. They most times need delivery men." 

"You're skilled with people. You ought to seek out a job you can rise in, such as being a doorkeeper at a Parkside residence." 

Hasan shrugged as he folded his flannel drawers into a neat pile. "I'd need a school certificate for that." 

Janus was silent a minute, watching Hasan examine his new paper collar. Then he said, "I'm sorry that your marks weren't high enough for me to grant you the certificate." 

Hasan grinned at him. "Studies aren't my might. So no secretary's job for me, no bookkeeping – nothing with writing or numbers. There's still sacks out there; it's just a matter of snagging a place that will accept I've not done journeyman work." 

"Well, you have," Janus said. "It's just that your journeyman work . . ." He hesitated. 

"Isn't helpful in the delivery business," Hasan finished. "Or is it? 'Sir, I give tale to the truth: I've been known to deliver a dozen times in the same day, and whenever I did, I'd have you knowing, I delivered exactly to the right spot.'" 

Despite the horror such a joke conveyed, Janus could not hold back a chuckle. "That's the speech your patrons give, not you." 

"Michael turned the turtle over on the old customs, though. They might believe— What's going on down there?" 

As he spoke, another yelp came through the floorboards, followed by a sharp crack and a third yelp. Janus had been hoping for several minutes that Hasan would not notice the noise. He told the boy, "Michael loaned the use of his bedroom to a patron. I'm not sure why the patron chose those cramped quarters." 

Hasan listened for a minute, then said, "It sounds as though there's whipstering going on. The patron probably wanted to imagine he had the boy in a dungeon. Who's the boy? Pye?" Pye was one of the few boys in the house who was willing to endure being whipstered in exchange for the higher earnings he received. 

Janus was saved from having to reply as a bellow rose through the floorboards. Janus winced. Hasan said matter-of-factly, "So the patron is the one being whipstered. He'll be with Wyll, then. Only Wyll could make a patron crave that much pain." He dropped the cuff-studs he had been fingering, pushed the clothing back, and sat down in front of the small heap. "I'm all set, I have mind. Clothes, a book, and so much savings that I'll for sure be thefted the moment I step outside." 

"Find a bank," Janus advised. 

"Oh, I figured I'd let my family hold the money. That's where I go at start." 

Janus stared at him again. "You have a family?" 

Hasan had been leaning back, using the underwear as a prop for his back. Now he sat up and groaned. "For the King's love! I give oath that Michael draws joy in never giving tale to either of us what the other person has knowing of. He hasn't been on to you about my family?" 

"I just assumed that your family sold you to Outram, the way Michael's did—" 

"Oh, no," said Hasan with a smile. "Not at all. My family doesn't have knowing I exist." 

o—o—o

Hasan was one of the lucky ones. Unlike most Riverbend boys, he did not have parents who had been killed in manufactory accidents, or drank to escape from their misery, or beat their children or each other. The only suffering Hasan underwent as a child was poverty. 

He was the eldest of four children, the only boy, and therefore the family's main hope for an additional breadwinner. Vovim, having witnessed the results of child labor in Yclau, amazed the world by strengthening its traditional apprentice/journeyman system of teaching trades and professions. Vovim banned virtually all work for children under apprentice age. 

One of the few jobs open to young boys was as messengers. Hasan's parents, carefully considering their options, decided that their son would be safest working for one of the respectable businesses on Theater Avenue. They therefore secured a job for him at the district's one remaining temple theater, which offered the fringe benefit of allowing its messenger boys to watch rehearsals for free. Perhaps, his parents hoped, Hasan's exposure to the sacred plays would help him to withstand the temptations that afflicted all commoner boys. 

Perhaps the plays would have done this, if they had not been so boring. Barred by the theater's manager from attending the sacred erotic plays and the modern bawdy comedies, Hasan and the other messenger boys were only permitted to attend rehearsals of overly pious productions designed to edify gentlemen and ladies. Hasan, yawning, began to skip the plays. Far more interesting entertainment was to be found in Theater Avenue's alleys. 

His parents had warned him never to go through any alley without the company of another boy. What they had not known was how messenger boys acted in those alleys. Hasan, only eight, stood back to watch with wide eyes as the older boys groped each other in imitation of the prostitutes they saw daily on the avenue. Hasan was far too shy to ask any of the boys if he could try this. But he made the connection between what the boys were doing and the erotic plays he was denied admission to, and his curiosity grew. 

One morning, staring wistfully at the theater's main entrance as another forbidden performance began, he became aware of a man watching him. Since he had been taught not to speak to strange men, he turned away, only to turn back when the man said, "My wife is unable to join me today, and I have a spare ticket. Would you care to have it?" 

Hasan was cautious; any boy who had grown up in the Riverbend district was cautious about gifts. But there seemed to be no strings attached. The man simply gave him the ticket and walked inside. 

Hasan hesitated, then used his ticket to get inside. He was just in time to see the man slip money to the doorman; later, Hasan would realize that this was a bribe to let the underage boy through. The doorkeeper sniffed but took the money and allowed Hasan in. 

The ticket turned out to be to a numbered seat, which meant that Hasan ended up sitting next to his gift-giver. The man nodded politely to Hasan but otherwise did not speak to the boy until the interval, when he asked Hasan how he liked the play so far. 

Hasan, blushing at what he had seen, mumbled a few words in response but grew bold enough after a few minutes to ask about the meaning of some of the words he had heard. The man explained their meaning in a matter-of-fact fashion. 

By the end of the play, Hasan had grown comfortable enough to accept the man's invitation to lunch at his residence. Hasan expected to be introduced to the man's wife, but when he was ushered through a guarded back door to a large building facing the avenue, he found that he was to be the sole lunch guest. The man explained that he spent his weekdays living in his workplace, only returning home to his wife in the mid-class district during week-breaks. This was a common custom, and Hasan accepted the explanation. Nor was he afraid, because so many people were present in the nearby hallway. Servants scurried about, women hurried by in shimmering dresses . . . Hasan even thought he caught sight of a boy or two. But he could not be sure, because the man kept distracting him by asking him about his family and his work. 

When lunch was through, Hasan realized that the door to the remainder of the house was now shut, though he could hear people talking on the other side of the door in an easy manner. He was just trying to decide how to politely thank his host for the meal and leave, when the man said, "If you like, I could tell you a bit more about the sacred plays." 

The end result of all this, after two hours, was the man's offer to demonstrate to Hasan what the boys had been doing in the alleys. The man made it clear that he was offering a gift, like the ticket. Hasan, who had grown warm during the lengthy discussion of erotic plays, agreed to the demonstration. This proved to be so pleasant that afterwards, when the man asked Hasan to show what he had learned, it would have seemed churlish to refuse. 

Only after they were through, and Hasan was beginning to collect together his clothes and his wits, did Outram reveal what Hasan had just done, and what he had thereby made himself. 

Hasan was horrified. Like all messenger boys on Theater Avenue, he knew what whores were, and he knew that they were outside the bounds of acceptable society, even by Riverbend standards. "She is dead to us" was the common phrase used by Riverbend families disclaiming acquaintance with a relative who had prostituted herself. In vain did Hasan protest tearfully that he had not understood that the theater ticket and meal were meant as payment for his services. Outram gently explained that Hasan had whored himself irredeemably, and he followed up this remark with several anecdotes about whore-boys he had known who had been killed by their parents after they were foolish enough to show their faces at home. 

Such stories abounded among the messenger boys; Hasan believed the tales. But he found it hard to believe that his parents would do such a thing to him. Surely not his loving parents – they had always forgiven him for his misdeeds. 

Outram dragged the boy upstairs to his own bedroom, locked Hasan inside, and proceeded downstairs to supervise the day's business. By an unfortunate oversight that he never again repeated, Outram forgot to take away Hasan's street clothes. Hasan climbed out the second-storey window, scrambled down a tree that could only have held the weight of someone his age, and ran home as fast as he could. 

When he arrived at the doorway of his home, it was just in time to hear his mother lead his young sisters in early evening prayers. He stood uncertainly at the door for a while, imagining himself interrupting this scene to tell his mother that he had sold his body to a man. Then, losing his nerve, he scribbled a few sentences on the pasteboard that all messenger boys carried. He slipped the note under the door. In the note, he told his parents what he had done at Outram's and begged their forgiveness. He told them he would come back the next day to see whether they wanted him as their son. 

He spent the night on the streets of Riverbend. He was still alive in the morning, which was more than he had come to expect after several hours of witnessing Riverbend streets at night. Still exhausted, he fell back to sleep. When he awoke, the midday sun of the week-break had reached its peak. Hasan cautiously approached his family's house. 

He was just in time to hear his father's cousin greet his father and ask after Hasan. 

His father's reply was flat: "My son is dead." 

o—o—o

"Outram told your parents you were dead?" Janus said. 

Hasan was leaning back once more against his small nest of belongings. Janus's bedroom, like all of the rooms in the servants' wing, faced the high wall of a warehouse, so the room was perpetually dim. Janus could see Hasan's smile, though, as the boy said, "You're of quicker wit than I was." 

"If you told your parents who seduced you, then your parents must have gone to see Outram, and he must have found a method by which to send them away. He was taking a chance, though, by declaring you dead. You could have turned up alive at your family's home." 

"Oh, aye, Outram was ever a gambler." Hasan's voice remained light. "He wasn't being orthodox, you know, in snagging a virgin off the streets. Despite what the newsies say of whoremasters, men like Outram don't most times kidnap children. They're too busy buying children from their parents. Did you have knowing that the city guild lists the municipal pleasure houses as places where parents can apprentice their boys?" 

A curse escaped Janus's lips, which made Hasan smile broaden. Janus said, "I can't believe that your parents were so naive as to believe what Outram told them." 

"Oh, he didn't give tale I was dead," replied Hasan. "He performed my dad a play." 

Janus was silent a minute. The sounds downstairs had momentarily diminished, and few other sounds could be heard. Michael, who had left his usual post this afternoon to undertake an "errand," had left orders with Wyll that no more patrons were to be admitted that day. Only the few patrons who had been in the courtyard earlier were still in the house, and all four of them were being entertained by their chosen boys. 

Janus said, "You mean a funeral play." 

Hasan nodded. "Outram is an uttermost clever man. As soon as he found I'd managed to escape him, he was knowing he'd soon be facing an angry dad. So he sent one of his assistants to the south gate of the King's Bridge, close enough to the guards to hear the travellers give tale of why they wanted to cross into the northern part of the city. Sure as can be, my dad turned up at the gate and gave his tale to the guard. And the assistant, who already had travelling rights on the bridge, raced back to Outram's and was on to him about how my dad was coming, and that my dad believed Outram had hold of me as prisoner." 

Janus stared incredulously at Hasan. "And Outram prepared a play at that point?" 

Hasan chuckled. "Never let it be given tale that the art of improvisation is dead in Vovim. Mind, I'm figuring Outram had already made plans for such a play in long past, in case it should be ever be a necessity. The theater manager next door owed Outram a large debt, so Outram drew back his debt that day. When my dad arrived, Outram's doorkeeper was on about the whoremaster being next door, attending a funeral play. And a play was certainly giving play when my dad went next door. There were players on the stage, and a chief mourner – Outram himself – and a temple representative. The manager," Hasan added, anticipating Janus's question. "She had the right costumes for the role in her wardrobe. The rest of the players gave play they were the audience, crying at the drama's tale of a whoremaster who, out of the goodness of his heart, decided to rescue a whore-boy from the deadly streets. To his horror, the generous whoremaster came to know he had corrupted an innocent child. The child killed himself, as anyone could guess, and the temple right away burned the body so to get rid of the pollution of a sinful death." 

"And your father watched all this," Janus said with a tight throat. 

"And after, he had to abide Outram grovelling at his feet, weeping his willingness to go with my dad to the King's patrol, in case my dad craved to bring charges against him. My dad wouldn't go and bring further shame against my name by telling all what had happened. He drew from Outram the box of ashes that he figured was me, scattered the ashes over the King's Bridge, went home, and gave knowing about me to the others in my family. Then he set about trying to put me from his mind." At Janus's shocked look, Hasan added gently, "He'd already watched three children die. One of my brothers was murdered. That's what life is like in Riverbend. My father had learned to put down his grief as quick-like as he could so it wouldn't wreck the work he did to keep the rest of our family living." 

"So that's why he responded to your cousin's enquiry in the cool way he did," Janus murmured. 

His face serious now, Hasan nodded. "As far as he and the rest of my family were concerned, everything was over." 

"But it wasn't over for you," Janus said quietly. 

o—o—o

Outram's wife had left him many years before, when she caught him in adultery. Rumor had it that Outram had started his whorehouse soon afterwards, so as to ensure that his future bed-mates could not leave him against his will. 

He kept Hasan for himself for the first year, hiding the boy in his wardrobe whenever the city inspectors arrived each quarter. Hasan, whose fear of Outram was exceeded only by his fear of being thrown onto the night streets, kept quiet. 

At the end of the first year, Outram decided that Hasan now looked old enough to pass in the city inspections as an eleven-year-old, the minimum age for an apprentice. To patrons greedy for young boys, on the other hand, Hasan could be sold for his true age of nine. Hasan was accordingly trained in his new profession. 

Six months later, as Hasan approached the age of ten, another apprentice arrived at Outram's. 

From the moment he heard Hasan's story of how the boy had arrived at Outram's, Michael was suspicious of what had happened with Hasan's family, but he could do nothing. Though he would later teach himself the trick of sneaking out of the whorehouse on feast days, when Outram invariably got drunk, neither Michael nor any other boy prostitute on Theater Avenue could cross the King's Bridge into the Riverbend district. Boy prostitutes who tried to cross the river without a pass from their whoremasters were assumed to be runaway apprentices and journeymen, and were returned to the custody of their masters. So Michael bided his time. 

Ten years later, Michael turned twenty-one, and Outram reluctantly released his most popular prostitute from his contract. Outram offered Michael a position as his assistant, and even hinted that he would bequeath the pleasure house to him after his death. But Michael declined the gift. Outram was therefore delighted when, a day later, Michael turned up at the whorehouse and asked to speak privately with him. 

Outram was less delighted when he heard Michael's message. 

"I know the lies you told Hasan's family," the young man said. "You will give Hasan his freedom. If he's really the age you claim him to be, then he's twenty-one now, and it's illegal for you to keep him as a whore. If he's actually nineteen, then you took an underage boy as your apprentice, and I'll report what you did to the King's patrol. Most likely the city guild will shut you down." 

This was bluff; Michael knew what little chance there was that an ex-prostitute's word would be trusted, and since he had only spoken with Hasan's cousin-once-removed so far, he could not be sure that Hasan's parents would back his charge. So he walked out of the room as Outram was still spluttering, whispered a few swift words to Hasan in the foyer, and left Outram to think about his threat. 

Outram did not act in haste. But after a month of hearing more and more rumors about Michael's rise to the higher status of whoremaster, Outram concluded that Hasan was not worth the risk. He accordingly threw Hasan onto the streets with warnings about what he would do to Hasan's friends among the remaining prostitutes if the young man dared to slander him. 

It was now over eleven years since Hasan had first walked through the door of Outram's House of Women and Boys. 

o—o—o

"See now, that's why Outram hates Michael so much," concluded Hasan. He was back on his feet, neatening his pile of clothes. "Michael didn't just battle Outram while he was a whore; he forced Outram to yield me my freedom." 

"But you came to work here." 

Hasan nodded as he carefully tested the strength of his canvas suspenders. "Near the time Outram threw me away, word went round the trade that Outram and the other municipal whoremasters had decided to drive Michael out of business. They were worried about his new whorehouse, see. Michael had already made it the fashion for patrons to be whipstered; the whoremasters were afraid Michael would give his whores better conditions, like as he claimed he would do, and the whoremasters would be forced to change their own businesses. So they set out to keep experienced whores from contracting with Michael." Hasan shrugged. "I'd already been a whore for a ten-year. I figured another year or so wouldn't make sacks of difference." 

Janus watched Hasan roll up the muffler, his mind split in two directions. One part of him was thinking that he had been wrong when he assumed that Hasan was born with the gift of discernment. That particular talent had been born from suffering and hard experience. 

The other part of him was thinking that Hasan had given his body to the use of men for an extra year, all for Michael's sake. If this was an indication of Hasan's usual behavior toward Michael, no wonder Michael valued Hasan so greatly. No wonder he had told Hasan secrets but had not shared his thoughts in full with Janus. Janus felt a twisting in his stomach. 

He tried to ignore it, saying, "So your family doesn't yet know you're alive?" 

Hasan shook his head. "I had mind it would be better to wait till I was no longer a whore before I gave tale to them. Less embarrassing for them that way." 

"That's considerate of you," said Janus, "but hardly necessary. I'm sure your family will cry with joy when they see you." 

Hasan gave a half smile. "It's always that way in the novels, aye?" He reached over to lightly touch the book Janus had given him, about a prostitute who made his way back into respectable society by virtue of his manifestly shining character. Scooping up the book and his clothes from the bed, he added, "I'll leave the rest for you to yield to the other boys. Do you figure dinner is ready yet? My stomach is thundering." 

"Wyll doesn't have kitchen duty today," Janus said, "which means that dinner might actually be ready on time, for once. You go ahead; I'll be down in a minute." He turned his attention to the trinkets, carting them from his bed to the crates that now served as his dresser. 

Not until he heard Hasan's step on the stairs outside did he remember; then he dropped the nail brush he was holding and rushed out of his room. He caught up with Hasan halfway down the stairs and took hold of the boy's arm, saying breathlessly, "You'd better wait. You might disturb the patron in Michael's bedroom." 

Hasan had always shown immediate obedience in a manner that made Janus's heart ache. The boy began to turn round but froze as through the floorboards of the steps came the clear sound of the patron saying, "Well, that was interesting. Not the sort of thing I'd do again, I've decided, but definitely worth trying once." 

"I'm pleased that you found my service acceptable." Michael's voice was toneless. 

Janus looked at Hasan, still frozen in mid-step. No surprise had entered the boy's face, which said something about the intimacy between himself and Michael. Janus wondered whether Michael had announced his plan to Hasan before he told Janus. 

"Oh, yes, that too," replied the patron. "Your techniques were definitely worth witnessing. But what I meant was that it was a pleasure simply to be served by Michael the Whore. My friends on Theater Avenue would be envious if they could see me now." His voice held a smile. 

There was a moment's silence. And then the floorboards shook underneath Janus's feet as though a manufactory had exploded. The quaking was accompanied by a crash and a shout that was followed, incredibly, by a high-pitched scream. Then silence. 

Janus broke past his paralysis and began to run down the stairs. Hasan had already reached the foot of the stairs; the boy had dropped his street clothes and book and was racing toward the office door. Janus thought this odd – it wasn't like Hasan to run from danger. He had no time to puzzle this matter out, though; he was fumbling with the latch to Michael's bedroom. He swung the door open. 

The scene before him had changed considerably since Janus had seen it last. Michael's belongings were scattered over the floor, no longer hidden by the cot. The cot was now lying on its side, pinning down the legs of the man who called himself Archy. The patron, naked above the waist but for his suspenders, was flat on his back, his arms stretched motionless next to his sides. This was undoubtedly because Michael was sitting on the patron's chest, using his lower legs to trap the patron's arms. Michael was holding his crop, and he was pressing the stiff whip toward the floor. The patron's throat was between the crop and the floor. 

"Michael!" cried Janus. 

Michael looked over at Janus and then, after a bit, down again at the patron, whose face was turning the color of boiler-flames. A contemplative expression entered Michael's face. He appeared to consider his options for a moment, and then he moved his crop minutely. The sound of the patron's hoarse gasps filled the room. 

Janus felt something brush his arm and looked down to see that Lann was standing beside him, clutching a blanket round his shoulders and staring wide-eyed at what lay before him. Other boys were behind him. Suddenly faced with a terrible new threat, Janus whirled round, but he saw at once that Hasan had barred the door to the office, preventing anyone in the courtyard from entering the scene. Janus could hear the youth's voice on the landing above, calmly assuring the patrons there that nothing was taking place in the stairwell that need concern them. Only the boys who had taken a shortcut through the house's private kitchen were witness to what was happening. 

Janus looked back again at the scene and was relieved to note that Michael was fully clothed. The whoremaster had now noticed the presence of the boys. His gaze flicked over them before coming to rest upon Lann. 

"Master Lann," he said in a cool, formal manner, "will you be so kind as to show Mr. Archibald the way to the door? He will not be entering this house again." As he spoke, Michael rose swiftly to his feet, kicked the cot off the patron with a violence that made Janus and the boys jump in their places, and jerked the gasping man to his feet. 

"Yes, Michael," replied Lann. The boy came forward, tentative on his feet, and laid his hand gently upon the patron's arm. "Will you come with me, please, sir?" he asked, looking up at the man. 

The patron, still red in the face, looked like a player who wishes to stay onstage to deliver a climactic speech. But Janus, scooping up the man's remaining clothes, had come to the patron's other side and taken his arm, in a grip not at all gentle. The patron winced and permitted Lann and Janus to escort him from the room. 

The boys at the doorway had already begun to disperse. It was hardly the first time that Michael had discovered a patron breaking the house rules with a boy and made his displeasure clear. They had lost several rich patrons that way. 

o—o—o

"It was my fault," said Janus. 

Michael did not reply. He was kneeling on the floor of his office, his head bowed as he wiped a spotless white handkerchief across his crop, over and over again, as though he were trying to remove layers of blood. 

"It was all my fault," Janus repeated. "I knew he was a player. Gods, I saw him just this morning!" He did not add that it is difficult to recognize a man whom you have last seen wearing a false beard and a wig of golden curls. 

"It's not your fault." Michael rose from the floor, tucked his crop under his left arm, and went over to the speaker's stand. As he removed his pen from the rack on the ink-stand, he said, "I should have caught him myself. He used one of the commonest tricks whores are taught to recognize, pretending that he didn't know what he was buying. I was just too eager for his money." He opened his ledger-book and began to write. 

From where Janus stood, he could see that Michael was making his usual entry for a transaction: The name of the patron. The price. The name of the boy sold. "Maybe he won't tell anyone," Janus said. 

Michael did not bother to reply. With hopelessness noosing his throat, Janus asked, "What do we do, then?" 

Michael halted in the midst of setting down black comments on Archy's character. His pen-hand went to his pocket; when it rose again, it was holding a roll of bills. 

"We use this to save Lann," he said. "And we let the future show itself as it will. The fates know that we have enough things to worry about already, such as Hasan's birthday." Then he turned and walked back to his cramped bedroom, before Janus could ask why Hasan's twenty-first birthday was a matter to worry about.


	3. Chapter 3

The feast had already begun by the time Janus returned to Michael's House, even though Janus had attended the dawn worship, standing among the gentlemen in the back so that his parents would not notice him. As he reached the courtyard of Michael's House, he paused at the end of the entrance hall, surveying the festivities. The games had already finished, and now the tables that were usually scattered around the courtyard had been shoved together to form one long dining table. Since the tabletops were circular, the result was comical: holes gaped in between the platters of rat ribs, alley-dog meat-buns, and other such Riverbend delicacies. 

A plank had been placed over the middle of the table, so as to support the centerpiece. At Janus's last coming-of-majority feast – his own – the centerpiece had been a flavored ice-cake. Here it was an enormous bowl of rum. 

Janus had been aghast the previous year, when he learned that he was expected to serve alcohol to boys as young as thirteen. His own parents were teetotallers, and one session with strong drink at university – followed by hours of vomiting and headaches – had convinced Janus that, in this respect at least, his parents had followed the wisest path. 

Michael, who never drank anything stronger than tea, had been the one to explain to Janus that most of these boys had been raised in households where they were served alcohol from the day they were weaned. There was no cow's milk in Riverbend – at least, no milk that it would be safe to drink. No iceboxes kept fruit juices unfermented, while tea and coffee and pop were too expensive for most families. The only drinks readily available in Riverbend were water and alcohol; if Janus stripped the boys of their alcohol, they would quickly abandon Michael's House. Or so Michael predicted. 

They had compromised by allowing the boys to sip from the drinks offered to the patrons, and by giving them rum on feast days. The boys, attributing this state of affairs to the obvious fact that their whoremaster had little money, had cheerfully accepted the limitations on their drinking time. And just as cheerfully enjoyed their times of drinking. 

Janus took another look at the raucous gathering at the table. Several boys were having a hard time balancing in their chairs, and one boy looked as though he were close to passing out. Janus cast a quick glance at an open door nearby, leading to a room where chamber pots had been placed for the sake of boys who could not make it as far as the water closet adjoining Michael's office. Janus sighed, envisioning the clean-up that would follow the feast. He hoped that Michael could identify which boys had visited the room most often, so that Janus could set them to work in the cleaning. 

If any of them were still able to stand by then. Janus looked up toward the skylight, trying to calculate how many hours were left till the house's opening time, but a second glance down to the man sitting at the head of the table assured Janus that the feast was not yet out of hand. Michael was always strict about ensuring that feast-day celebrations did not interfere with work conditions, and he would not allow anyone here to become too drunk to work. 

Except, perhaps, the guest of honor. 

Hasan, from the look of it, had already imbibed liberally from the rum bowl. He was shouting a rude joke to Wyll, who was at the other end of the table and looked as though he could drink all day without it affecting his head. Hasan paused long enough to smile up at Janus, who had come over to greet him. Janus leaned over to place his hand on Hasan's shoulder and found himself being sucked into an embrace. He let the youth kiss him on the cheek. Hasan was an affectionate young man who distributed kisses liberally to all he met, whether they be small boys or ugly old women. Janus had never been able to figure out how to persuade the youth that he would be better off directing his kisses toward Riverbend's girls. 

The youth had elected to attend his coming-of-majority feast dressed in his whore-clothes – undoubtedly the right choice, for it allowed the boys to treat him as one of their own, rather than try to find the appropriate remarks concerning Hasan's newfound manhood. All of the boys were wearing their rainbow-bright clothes, even Lann, who was lying on a settle near the table, muffled by pillows and blankets. He barely noticed as Janus took his cup and refilled it with lemonade; he was absorbed in a tale Wyll was telling about his last girlfriend before he became a prostitute. 

Under cover of the appreciative roars that accompanied this storytelling, Janus knelt down next to Michael's chair and said in a low voice, "I talked to a few people on Theater Avenue afterwards. None of them have heard any new rumors about you." 

"That doesn't signify." Michael used his fork to chase a pea on a plate that looked untouched. "The sort of people you'd know wouldn't have heard such rumors." 

Janus was silent, knowing that Michael was right. Nearby, Pye shouted above the cheers, "Speech! Speech!" 

He was joined by others, and Hasan rose unsteadily to his feet from his chair to the left of Michael. "Gentlemen!" he said, and the others laughed in response to this greeting. "And ladies." He directed his gaze toward two of the youngest boys, who had been holding hands under the table. They blushed and hastily dropped their hands. 

Janus slid quietly into the empty chair to the right of Michael. He did not know what speech Hasan had planned, and he was not sure now whether he wanted to hear it. Hasan always acted with careful calculation, even when drunk. If he had spoken in such a way as to stop any surreptitious lovemaking at the table, it was because he had something serious to say. 

In the next moment, Janus knew for certain that he did not want to hear the speech, for Hasan said, in a voice that carried over the renewed laughter, "I wish to give tale to you of the day I made the Deep Dive." 

Instantly there was silence; the boys who did not know of the Deep Dive took their cue from those who did. Pye, who had worked as a street-whore before his arrival at Michael's House, looked somber. By contrast, Evan appeared blessedly innocent of all understanding of Hasan's choice of topic. Wyll had that look on his face which he adopted when he knew little about a topic but was trying to pretend that he did. Lann, though, had sat up amidst his pillows and was hugging his legs as he turned his head to watch Hasan. 

All eyes were fixed upon the birthday youth, other than those of Michael. The whoremaster continued to concentrate his attention upon the elusive pea. 

"Four years ago today," Hasan said in a fair imitation of gentlemanly speech, "I turned seventeen, and as a giving to me for reaching journeyman age, my former whoremaster, Outram, decided to sell my services to a patron who wished to do the Deep Dive on a boy." 

There was no sound now but for the soft snore of the boy who had passed out. Hasan's grave gaze travelled the length of the table before settling upon Janus, who was gripping a spoon tightly. Hasan smiled. 

"Out of respect for those who have mercifully escaped all knowledge of the Deep Dive," he said without removing his gaze from Janus, "I will state only that, unless performed by the patron with perfection, the Deep Dive is the most painful act that any whore can undergo. Far more painful than the Circle Twist," he added to the rest of the table, causing several of the boys to gasp, among them Evan. Wyll evidently held no patience with this abbreviated description, for he leaned over to whisper to his neighbor, who had once worked in another pleasure house. The response he got caused his eyes to widen. 

By contrast, Pye had not asked for further details. He was busy scribbling onto one of the old newspapers that was being used as a tablecloth, as though he sensed he was listening to a speech worth recording. 

Lann did nothing; he simply continued to hug his legs as he listened. 

"I was terrified," said Hasan. "I knew that the patron had never done the Deep Dive on anyone before, and I was sure that he would do it wrong, and that I would not be able to endure the hurt. I had been given six hours in which to prepare myself, and so I went to the cell of the whore next door, to ask his advice." 

He turned his gaze to Michael, who finally lifted his eyes long enough to exchange glances briefly with Hasan. Then Michael reached for the jar of lemonade. 

"I asked Michael what I should do," Hasan said quietly, "and he did the Deep Dive on me." 

There was a stirring around the table. Several of the boys frowned, but no one looked surprised. Everyone knew what Michael had once done to his old patrons; everyone could believe that he was capable of doing such a deed, even to a friend. Lann was one of those frowning, but there was puzzlement in his eyes, as though he felt that something had gone amiss in the telling. 

"Or rather," Hasan added yet more softly, "I should say that he had me do the Deep Dive on him." 

Wyll, reaching over to take more rum from the bowl, spilled his half-filled cup; the liquid ran across the table in front of him, blotting the newspaper. No one noticed. Everyone was staring at Michael, who had returned his attention to the pea. 

"Nine times he was making me do it on him," Hasan said softly, his concentration on the tale causing him to begin sliding back into Riverbend dialect. "Nine times, till I had knowing of how to do it right. Then he learned me how to yield my knowing to the patron in so tactful a manner that the patron would have mind he himself had drawn this skill to my bed. How Michael managed to yield me the final instructions, I've never had knowing. By the time I finished with him, he must have been like a prisoner who has been racked for five hours by the High Seeker." He looked again at Michael, a look that the whoremaster stubbornly refused to meet. In an unwavering voice, Hasan said, "I dedicate my feast-day to Michael, who is a better whoremaster than any of us deserve." 

"To Michael!" came the cry. Several of the older boys, whom Michael had rescued from the streets, were already on their feet, and all of the other boys at the table soon joined them. Even Lann straightened up from his cramped pose. 

Wyll, who hated sentimentality, put an end to the pause following the chorus by thumping the table and saying, "Privilege! Privilege!" 

Everyone laughed as they reseated themselves. Janus, who had stood with the others, cast a worried glance at Michael. No expression on Michael's face revealed how he felt about Hasan's tribute. The whoremaster looked as though he had not heard it at all. 

Hasan, laughing, sat down with the rest, but only long enough to reach over to Pye's plate and pluck a strawberry from it. Pye had begun scribbling Hasan's final words. He looked up, startled, as Hasan held the strawberry high. 

"The privilege I claim," Hasan said as he stood up, "is to share my meal with the person here who needs it the most." Then he put the strawberry to his lips and bit down upon it, imprisoning it so that it projected halfway out of his mouth. 

Cheers rose as the other boys realized what Hasan planned. Hasan made his way round the edge of the table as Evan started singing the opening words of "The Ballad of the High Seeker and His Love-Mate." Several of the younger boys leaned back in their chairs in hope of receiving the gift. Hasan smiled at them but continued to make his way round the table. 

Janus was beginning to feel nervous. He wondered whether it would be an act of utter cowardice if he were to choose this moment to bring Lann another cup of lemonade. Then he realized that he was safe. Hasan stepped past him and, with the smoothness of much practice, straddled Michael's legs and sat down upon his lap. 

The cheers threatened to bring down the courtyard's glass dome. Still smiling around the strawberry, Hasan leaned forward. 

Janus did not see what happened to the strawberry; all he knew was that the kiss lasted a very long time. Michael did not seem inclined to encourage the gift. His arms lay limp at his sides, not touching Hasan. 

Janus felt then a lurch in his stomach such as had not occurred since the last time he accidentally walked in on one of the boys when he was serving a patron. As the kiss ended and Hasan drew back, smiling down at Michael's blank face, Janus rose to his feet and began to stumble toward the room with the many chamber pots. 

o—o—o

Michael stood on the third-storey balcony overlooking the courtyard, staring down at his failures. 

He found it difficult not to think of them that way. Over there, mournfully singing a ballad about the madness of the High Seeker, was Evan, convinced that each patron would be his new love-mate, and attributing the loss of their "love" to his own mishandling. Stumbling through the entranceway with patron in hand was Lann, strong enough now from the drug to insist on returning to work, but still without guarantee that he would survive to the end of the year. Sitting over there in a corner, poring laboriously over a book of arithmetic, was Pye. Michael had discovered the boy in a drainpipe, sucking a supply of sweetweed, a drug that gave Michael one of his few reasons for gratitude toward his former whoremaster. Outram had always banned drugs from his pleasure house and had turned onto the streets any boy who used them. 

Michael's House, on the other hand, was filled with addicts: boys like Pye, who had been living on the streets, paying for their chosen drink or drug through the service of their bodies. Most of these boys could not be trusted with the patrons; fully a quarter of the boys at Michael's House were on what Janus euphemistically described as "healing leave." Pye was unusual only because Janus's patient tutoring had roused in the boy the unlikely ambition of becoming a schoolmaster. Now Pye spent all his effort on killing his sweetweed habit and studying to take the exam of the schoolmasters' guild. 

Michael had not yet revealed to Pye or Janus that a whore becoming a schoolmaster was an imagining that only existed in Janus's idealistic dreams. Time enough for Pye and Evan and the other dreamers to learn that an ex-whore had no place in this world, other than in desolate houses like this one. 

Michael turned his attention to Wyll. Wyll was one of his few successes, mainly because the boy's ambitions had been low when he first arrived. Wanting nothing more than a painless way to earn money and a certain satisfaction in holding power over men's desires, Wyll had remained contented even when he learned that his work would be far from painless and that he would have less power over his patrons than he had anticipated. Oddly enough, Wyll had acquired an artisan's pride in his work, taking satisfaction when he did well the job he had been assigned. 

Michael was not prepared to admit to himself that Wyll's care in his labor was due to the example of Michael's own painstaking labor over the boys' living and working arrangements. Nor was he willing to listen in more than a token fashion when Janus insisted that a boy like Wyll could be persuaded to put his labor to more respectable use than prostituting his body. The boy wanted to be a whore; Michael wasn't in the business of trying to transform people. It was not as though he could manage that feat with himself. 

He looked at Evan again, who had reached the point in the ballad where the High Seeker entered his madness. Tears were running down the youth's face. The boys near him – resting and playing during the early afternoon break that Janus insisted they receive – screwed up their faces in disgust. It was not so much Evan's maudlin rendering of the ballad that offended them; it was Evan's terrible singing voice. Watching the boy, Michael tried to think of what Janus would feel if he were watching this scene. Annoyance? Pity? Horror? 

Michael ran through the possibilities in his mind for a minute; then he surrendered the puzzle. He was one of the failures in this room, he knew, which made it ironic that he had selected himself to try to lead these boys to a certain measure of freedom. He let his mind drift toward the wondering that had never left his thoughts throughout this day: whether the boy he was sending out into the world would find success or failure. Most likely Michael would never know. 

He heard a footstep next to him and said, without turning his head to look, "You're up to go, then." 

"Aye," Hasan replied easily, coming into Michael's view as he leaned onto the railing. He was wearing his street clothes now. "If my family's got no room for me, I've found a lodging house over the Red-eye Saloon that won't munch my expenses too quick-like. I should have enough savings to see me through till I find work." 

Michael wondered to himself whether Hasan had deliberately revealed his future location; then he dismissed the thought. "Luck in your path," he said, as he had always said on the days when Hasan was faced with a particularly difficult patron. 

Hasan did not reply. Letting his thoughts drift, Michael realized that this was the first time, since becoming Hasan's whoremaster, that he had spoken to Hasan in his old way. He had taught himself long ago to speak like a gentleman, as a way to earn higher tips, but he had always used his native tongue when alone with Hasan. There had seemed no reason to do otherwise. Now that Hasan was leaving, there would be no need to speak in the Riverbend dialect with anyone else, and the last of his fragmentary ties with his early childhood would be cut forever. 

He wondered, as he often did, what else had been left behind, so long ago. 

He had virtually forgotten about Hasan. He sensed the young man's movement only as he had once sensed Hasan moving beside him, as he slept. After a moment Hasan, now beyond his sight, said, "Well, I'll be going, then." 

He nodded silently. After a minute he heard Hasan's feet on the stairs of the servants' wing, and after a minute more he faintly heard the sound of Hasan speaking to Lann, who had returned to his post at the front entrance. Then came the sound of the front door closing, and nothing more. 

Evan had reached the point of the song where the High Seeker's love-mate was mourning the loss of the High Seeker; the whore-boy's rendition of the tale had more tears than words. Michael thought to himself that this was the wrong ballad for the occasion. The High Seeker was still here, where he had always been. Though he supposed the part about the madness was appropriate. 

He sighed and closed his eyes. In novels, characters always sighed and closed their eyes when they were at a point where they could find no solution to a great trouble. Michael paused his thoughts a moment to see whether his body had noticed the action in any way. No shivers ran through his skin; his throat was not tight; his heart beat as steadily as before. None of this was unexpected – he wondered why he even bothered to check. Then he checked to see whether this thought brought any response. Nothing. 

He heard another step beside him. Opening his eyes, he turned his head to look. Janus, who had been out walking since the feast that morning, had his gaze fixed upon the boys below. After a time, Janus said, "Hasan has left?" 

"A few minutes ago. He must not have realized you were back; otherwise he would have said his goodbyes to you." 

Janus did not answer at once. As a boy, he had looked delicate and fragile, which Michael, in his inexperience, had taken as a sign that the boy needed a protector. Within a few years, he had come to realize that Janus's delicacy was the delicacy of centuries of selective breeding. Janus was fragile in the way that a greyhound was, carefully bred to be refined and cultured in his sensibilities. All of that refinement had become clear in his adult appearance: even in his lounge suit, he looked the very picture of the high-born gentleman, crisp and pure and with scarcely a fault to mar his appearance. The odd thing was that, unlike the semblance of many patrons Michael had known over the years, Janus's appearance of purity held truth. 

Still staring at the courtyard below, Janus asked, "Have you told him the truth?" 

Under ordinary circumstances, Michael, who had learned caution at an early age, would have replied, "The truth about what?" Now, though, he remained silent. On Janus's face was an expression that Michael had not seen since the day in their early youth when Janus, after attending a romanticized drama about life in a pleasure house, had taken it into his head that Michael was carrying on an impassioned love affair with one of his patrons. 

In an automatic manner, Michael checked his pulse, his breathing, the sensation of his skin, the state of his abdomen. Nothing. They were as untouched as a pond surface that has known no wind. This was odd; if ever there were a time in Michael's life when he would expect the water to ripple, it would be now. But he supposed that only confirmed what he had always known, that the water could not ripple. He wondered whether it ever had. 

He glanced at the boys again before he stepped back from the balcony and started walking toward the stairs, knowing that Janus would follow. As he did so, he became aware that he was tapping his crop against his thigh. He forgot sometimes that the whip was there; it seemed like an extension of his arm. He thought to himself that he should ask Janus about that some time and learn whether that was normal. He didn't recall ever reading about anything like this in the novels, but then, most of the novels he had read were set in the city. Perhaps novels about people carrying hunting crops in the country provided more information. 

The stairwell was very cold. He and Janus were not at all sure they had enough money to buy fuel through the autumn, much less the winter; the boys' rooms were heated only during the afternoons and evenings, when the patrons were present. He wondered whether, when the first snows came, they would lose most of their patrons, as they had on the previous winter because Michael did not yet know of any way to heat the courtyard. In the meantime, some of the boys had taken to sneaking into each other's beds at night in order to keep warm. Michael, shivering alone in his room under the stairs, envied them. 

They reached the office. Michael waited until Janus was inside and the door was shut before saying, "I didn't realize you'd guessed." 

Janus sighed heavily. Michael had always envied Janus's ability to sigh so well. "Michael," said his friend, "if any other boy had kissed you at his coming-of-majority feast, you would have wrapped your arms around him and kissed him firmly back. You wouldn't have sat there frozen, as though someone had just lowered a box boom upon your head." 

He tried to think of an appropriate gesture to make in response to this remark. He knew that he was surprised and a little chagrined that Janus had guessed his secret. What was the right gesture to convey surprise? He couldn't remember. 

He was still trying to nudge his ill-functioning memory when Janus asked, "How long have you been in love with him?" 

"I'm not sure I am." Seeing Janus's brow furrow low in the expression he used when he was skeptical, Michael added, "I'm not sure what it is I feel—" He stumbled on the word, as he always did. As usual, Janus failed to notice, and he tried again. "I'm not sure what it is I feel for him. When we were together at Outram's, I took his presence for granted. I took it for granted that, on the nights after he'd been with a difficult patron, he'd come and curl up in my bed, and I took it for granted that, on the nights after Outram had used me in his bed, Hasan would come sleep with me again. It never occurred to me to think about it. Only after I'd left Outram's did I realize that I missed those nights. I enjoyed Hasan's company." 

Janus said nothing. His brow was still furrowed, which was a problem. Michael knew at least two dozen emotions that could accompany Janus's furrowed brow. He wasn't sure which one this was. 

Perhaps he should just keep talking until Janus made a movement he could interpret. Michael continued, "When Hasan turned up at our doorway later that month, my first thought was, 'Now we'll be able to sleep together again.' And I think it occurred to me that perhaps, if Hasan wanted it, I could give him more than just my warmth in exchange for his company. But in the next moment he said that he'd come here to work at my house, and I realized that everything I was thinking of would be impossible. I couldn't sleep with one of my boys, not even in a chaste manner. The other boys would expect me to sleep with them as well, and they'd be either jealous or terrified, depending on their personalities. It would be bad for business, and you would never allow it. So it never happened." 

Janus gave out a very long sigh, as though he had been holding his breath all this while. He sank into a chair nearby. Michael mentally noted his actions as the proper way to respond to good news. 

"I was worried," Janus confessed, as though his actions had not revealed as much. "We'd had all those arguments about you training boys. . . . I knew that you'd never bedded any boy who was already fully trained, like Hasan was, but still, I couldn't help but wonder whether you wanted to take the boys to your bed. And when I realized about Hasan—" He paused to take out his handkerchief and wipe his brow. Michael noted the action, but placed it in his mental file-book of "actions appropriate for Janus but not for me." It had taken him a year after he began keeping mental files to start that particular file-book. At the beginning, he had thought that everything Janus did was right for him as well. It had taken him much time and study to realize this was not the case – that different people acted in different ways, depending on their characters. That made the matter all the more difficult, of course, and he had been tempted to abandon his studies at that point. But not greatly tempted; he knew how much depended on his success. 

He shook his head. "I never acted sexually toward Hasan except on the occasion he told of this morning. I never even slept with him after I left Outram's. And what I feel— What I feel for him is unique. It's because we suffered together at Outram's; it wouldn't happen with anyone else." 

Janus's face held an expression that Michael couldn't read. He could have sworn he knew all of Janus's expressions. He waited, knowing that Janus's next words would reveal the meaning of the expression. That was one of the nice things about Janus: his feelings were always on the surface, ready to reveal at any moment. Hasan had been far harder to interpret. 

Janus's voice was choked when he finally spoke. "I was just thinking . . . If you'd rather I left . . . I don't want to be in the way . . ." 

Michael stared at Janus without comprehension for a moment, trying to translate the words into a meaning he could recognize. Then he remembered the play about the love-sick whore, and pain entered him. 

At least, he thought it was pain. He had never been sure, but it seemed to him that, at the moments he had a thought he wanted to avoid, that must be a moment indicating pain. He wished he could be sure; he hated to think that he had been misinterpreting his thoughts all these years. 

He saw, from the look on Janus's face, that he had let his mind wander again. Quickly he let his look fall into the expression that denoted pain: a scrunched-up face, a bitten lip. He saw Janus's body relax, and he noted that as the appropriate way to respond to a return to expected conditions. 

"Janus," he said, taking care to make his voice as husky, as he supposed it should be under these circumstances. "What I feel— What I feel for Hasan is entirely different from what I feel for you. Hasan is . . . " He searched his mind, trying to put into words the thoughts he had never needed to voice. "Hasan is a comfort. He is warmth at night, a penetrating eye, and a voice and hand that bring peace. He is like a blanket that I wrap around me when I am chilled. But you . . ." This was easier; he had framed these words long ago, in case Janus should ever need them spoken. "You are the other part of me. You are my guide, my conscience. When other men need to know whether they have done right, they check their hearts, but I check you. I can survive without Hasan, in the same way that a street-whore survives without blankets. But I can't survive without you. Without you, I would be incomplete, maimed." 

He wondered, as he spoke, whether Janus would ask the obvious question: "Why don't you consult your heart?" Hasan, with his penetrating eye, would have asked. 

But Janus had his limitations. As usual, his friend concentrated his thoughts on the surface message and failed to recognize the words' implications. Janus gave another sigh, this one of relief. Once again, Michael reflected that Janus's ability to express emotion through his sighs was as skillful as that of an artist conveying a picture through colors. 

"Well," said Janus, his voice now as gruff as Michael's had been, "if that's how you feel. But you and Hasan . . ." He hesitated. 

Michael took care this time to frown. "I'm not Outram," he said. "I would be, if you weren't here, but I'm not that bad." 

"I didn't think you were," Janus said quickly. "I didn't really think that you'd try to make another man submit to you – not if you loved him. But I thought— Well, if you were tempted, I could understand." 

Michael wished then that he could feel the swelling of the chest, the thrill through the skin, and the buoyant spirits that ought to accompany his reaction to this statement. Instead, all he was left with was a single thought: he was so very lucky to have Janus in his life. How many men in the world were pure enough never to have experienced temptation to great evil themselves, yet could understand and sympathize with such temptation when it was experienced by another man? How could he ever find a way to convey to Janus what that man's friendship meant to him? 

He was still puzzling upon this dilemma when a chorus of cries sounded in the courtyard, mingled with screams. Alarm written upon his face, Janus spun round to face the door to the entrance hall. Michael, his reflexes quicker than Janus's, was already on his way to the door, but before he could reach it, the door was flung open. Wyll stood there, nearly incoherent. 

"There's— He's— You must see— Wait, no, don't let them escape outside!" 

He turned in time to scoop from the floor a small, bright object that was shooting toward the front door. As Wyll rose again, still laughing as the object squirmed in his arms, Michael saw that the object was a puppy. 

"Gods alive and dead," said Janus slowly. "What in the names of—" 

But Michael had already pushed past Wyll and was standing motionless in the doorway to the courtyard, gazing upon the scene of chaos. 

The courtyard was filled with puppies. There must have been two dozen of them, all of them golden-haired, and all of them being petted, teased, fed, and chased by the delighted boys. In one corner of the courtyard, a quarrel had broken out between several boys who wanted to play with the same puppy. At the fountain, another group of boys was teaching an eager puppy how to swim. And standing nearby, gazing upon the scene with wonder in his eyes, was Lann, who had escorted the gift-giver into this place. 

The gift-giver rose from kneeling next to an enormous basket on the floor, in which two little dogs still slept, oblivious to the excitement. "Here," he said, and placed a third puppy into Lann's arms. The soft bundle of fur immediately licked Lann's face, eliciting a rare giggle from the boy. 

Michael could not think how to shape his voice into anything other than its normal flatness. "What in Hell's name are you doing here?" he asked the gift-giver. 

The man smiled as he looked over Lann's shoulder at Michael. "Why, my last visit here was so pleasant that I've decided to make this my regular house of pleasure." He took a few steps beyond Lann, who had knelt down to let the puppy wobble across the floor. Pointing to Lann, Archy leaned over to Michael and asked in a conspiratorial whisper, "How much for the little Yclau boy? And please don't break my heart by telling me he's expensive. The fact is, I'm a bit short of money at the moment."


	4. Chapter 4

"Tell others of our encounter?" cried Archy. "Why, what do you think I am?" 

"A player," Michael replied drily. 

Janus cast a quick look at him. It was when Michael's voice went flat and his face drained of expression that Janus would begin to worry. Now, though, everything appeared normal: Michael was leaning back in his chair, fingering the armrest and frowning slightly into the lamplight. The courtyard was deserted but for them and the puppies snoring softly in their basket. Much to the boys' disgust, Michael had insisted that the puppies be returned to their previous owner – though after a whisper from Janus, Michael allowed Lann to keep his puppy. They needed a watchdog. 

Now the boys were asleep, for none of their patrons had elected to pay the extra money to spend the night with their chosen bed-mates. Janus was caught in a familiar tension between relief that the boys would sleep unmolested tonight and concern about what this loss of income could mean. 

Archy gave a snort of laughter. "I enjoy gossip as much as any other player – it's one of the benefits of the theatrical life. But sweet blood, not at the expense of a man's reputation! No, I didn't come here last time out of a desire to boast about sharing your bed. To tell the truth, frustration was what brought me here. You'll find this hard to believe, but though I'd heard your name mentioned now and then, it wasn't until last fall-turning that someone saw fit to recount to me the story of your amazing bed-skills. And by that time, of course, you'd retired. I've spent the past year fuming about my missed chance. I finally decided that it would be worth my while to test just how good a player I am." He relaxed deeper against the back of the settle, but without ceasing to stroke the object in his lap. "If I'd known that I would raise your fears by doing so, I'd never have asked to share your bed, of course. I very much regret that I did." 

Scrutinizing him, Janus thought to himself that Archy was indeed a good player. It seemed likely to him – and was no doubt quite plain to Michael – that Archy felt no regret whatsoever for what he had done and was merely apologizing out of good manners. 

And wasn't that the essence of good manners, to pretend to feelings that were appropriate for the occasion, but which you did not actually hold? Michael had said that to Janus one time. It had not occurred to Janus that players, who spent their lives pretending to feelings they did not possess, might be equally skilled at etiquette. 

Archy said abruptly, "You're pure-bred southern Vovimian, aren't you?" 

Janus switched his gaze to Michael. They had lit only a single lamp, and since the moon had not yet risen high enough to shine through the iron-and-glass dome, Janus could barely see Michael's dark hands resting against the dark wood. Janus had always known, of course, that Michael's family must be southern in origin, but it had not occurred to him before now that the darkness of Michael's skin implied that he was of as noble a lineage as Janus. 

Archy was saying, "When I first arrived in this kingdom thirty years ago, I asked a man, 'How do I tell who the elite here are?' I expected him to inform me that I should watch for a particular type of clothing, or a particular manner of speech. Instead he said, 'Look at their skin.' When he saw I didn't understand, he added, 'Vovim was founded by an alliance between a southern tribe and an eastern tribe – the other tribes joined later and are traditionally considered to be of lesser importance. Look for someone who has the black skin of southern Vovim or the olive skin of eastern Vovim. If the shade is deep enough, you'll know that you're in the presence of the elite." 

"Some of us are less elite than others," said Michael as he paused to tug at the sleeves of his commoners' sweater. 

"But you _are_ pure-blood?" Archy persisted. 

"I don't know," Michael replied calmly. "I have no memory of my early childhood." 

Startled that Michael would reveal this intimate fact to a stranger, Janus cast a worried look at Archy. Gone was the slight aura of respectability the player had worn upon the previous occasion; the mid-class suit, which Janus now realized must have been a stage costume, had been replaced by a commoners' outfit. His accent had changed too – it was neither pure Vovimian, as it had been on stage, nor pure Yclau, as it had been in Michael's office. Instead it was Vovimian touched with Yclau. Janus found this more unsettling than if Archy had still been a complete foreigner. 

The player merely nodded to Michael's remark in a matter-of-fact manner. "Some childhoods are best forgotten. Well, what I had planned to say was that, just as southerners' ways can seem strange to the average Vovimian, so too can Vovimian ways seem strange to the average foreigner – even one who has lived here for three decades. I'm afraid I didn't take as seriously as I should have your feelings about going to bed with another man, for the simple reason that, where I come from, my invitation would not have been regarded as an insult." 

Janus stopped himself just in time from rolling his eyes. Michael, his voice suddenly gone flat, said, "I've heard that it is considered more acceptable for a man to bed a grown man in Yclau." 

"More acceptable? Dear Michael, your phrasing would be regarded as topsy-turvy in Yclau. For an adult to bed another adult is considered the _only_ acceptable action. To bed a child is considered by the Yclau to be an act of high immorality." 

"You seem to have overcome that particular prejudice." Michael did not bother to make his voice dry this time; he simply dipped his gaze toward the object in Archy's lap. 

As though his name had been called, Evan opened his eyes and turned his head in Archy's lap to look up at his patron. "Archy?" he said in an enquiring voice. 

"Shh." Archy ran his hand softly over Evan's hair and down across the boy's clothed body, which was curled on the settle beside him. "Go back to sleep, my love." 

The boy obeyed him immediately, closing his eyes and returning to the slow, heavy breath of slumber. A smile dressed his face now. Archy ran his hand lightly over Evan's body once more before lifting his gaze to find two witnesses staring hard at him. 

He shrugged. "The lad fancies we're love-mates," he said. "I'm humoring him." 

Noting how Archy kept his voice and his touch soft, Janus thought to himself that Archy had spoken something less than the truth. Evan's usual manner of welcoming a new patron was to demand that the patron stay for a full day and night, as proof of his love. Archy was the first patron to have accommodated Evan's whim, despite the fact that doing so had required him to take off one of his shoes and empty out the emergency cash he kept hidden there. 

Janus tried to beat back his rising hopes. Michael had told him more than once that the only place where patrons rescued whores from pleasure houses and gave them all the riches of their love was in romantic novels. Evan had received contentment for a day; that was more than he usually received, and Janus would have to remain satisfied with that. 

"Oh, I like to think that my life here in Vovim has broadened my vision somewhat," Archy said in a relaxed manner. "There's no doubt that meeting one's love when he is still lively with youth is a pleasure not to be missed. But the idea of breaking off your love once the boy reaches the fruits of manhood seems absurd to me. And as for shutting away these lads in pleasure houses . . ." 

"You don't approve of houses of prostitution?" said Janus. He knew, from the look Michael gave him, that his voice was too eager. 

"Reserve lovemaking between males for the squalid exchange of money and services? I sometimes think that this" – he gave a vague wave toward their dark surroundings – "is a nightmare I have wandered into, a terrible parody of the way love should operate." 

"There's always marriage," Janus could not forbear from suggesting. 

Archy chuckled. "For you, perhaps. Marriage doesn't work for a player. My company is always going on tour – I couldn't drag a respectable wife and children to the rough places where we perform. A male love-mate, on the other hand . . ." He allowed his voice to drift away. 

Janus was having a difficult time keeping himself from crying aloud, "If you're so much in favor of love, why don't you take Evan away from this place?" His difficulty was compounded by the knowledge that there had been a time, not so long ago, when he would have considered it his duty as a gentleman to fight any man who was so vile as to take a boy to his bed, even in love. Janus was still trying to sort out his mixed impulses when Michael spoke. 

He said, "Then men bed each other in Yclau, not simply out of lust, but out of love?" 

Janus felt his heart thump as he turned his head toward Michael. Michael, he saw, was not looking at Evan; nor did he seem aware that the conversation had progressed considerably since Archy last spoke of men bedding men. Michael's mind, Janus realized with another thud of the heart, was focussed narrowly upon a single topic. 

"Why, certainly," Archy replied lightly. "Leaving aside the fact that we met in a pleasure house, the offer I made to you last time would have been treated, if we lived in Yclau, in exactly the same manner as a man's offer to bed a woman. That is to say, she might consider his offer an insult if she believed he was only interested in her body, but if she suspected that his interest lay in her soul as well . . . Mind you, courting between men is less common in Yclau than courting between men and women. Most men are interested in raising families. But there are certain places where love between men has always flourished – you've heard the ballads about the High Seeker and his love-mate, I suppose?" 

"Yes," said Michael. "I've heard the songs about those two men." 

His voice was flat. Utterly flat. His face was expressionless. And his body had ceased to move in any manner. Even without these signs, Janus would have been afraid. 

o—o—o

Janus was on edge. He was always on edge on the afternoons after he had made his monthly call upon his parents. His route home invariably took him through Theater Avenue, and as he squeezed his way past the prostitutes trying to lure gentlemen like him into extending their midday break, he could hear in his mind the sorrowful voice of his mother as she said, "It is beyond my understanding, dear, how you can choose to live your life amidst painted prostitutes." 

It was almost a relief to come home and find himself amidst prostitutes whose faces were free of paint. He had expected to have to fight Michael about that during their first year, but to his surprise, Michael had capitulated at once to Janus's suggestion that there was no need to dress the boys' faces in a gaudy, womanish manner. Not until later had Janus remembered that Michael had never come to their boyhood meetings with paint on his face. He must have wiped off the paint the moment he was beyond Outram's sight. 

By contrast, the fight about the clothes had lasted for weeks. Janus, standing in the doorway of the entrance hall, looked with distaste upon the skin-tight suits of the boys before him. He had spent much time and effort seeking to persuade Michael that the patrons would show greater respect for the boys if they were clad in schoolboy uniforms, and he had grown increasingly frustrated by Michael's stubborn refusal to accept this sensible suggestion. 

Finally, with the patience that Janus sometimes found annoying, Michael had shown him a copy of a popular Riverbend tale, the type of tale that was passed from hand to hand in saloons that Janus never frequented. This particular tale – which, Michael assured him, was highly popular among the patrons of Outram's – featured a man's assault upon an innocent schoolboy. The central portion of the story consisted of a detailed and highly erotic description of the boy's school uniform as it was stripped from the tearful victim. 

Janus had learned to respect Michael's knowledge of pleasure-house customs after that. In certain matters, he simply had to trust that Michael knew what he was doing. 

But only in certain matters. In other matters, Michael could not be trusted at all. Janus's memory sped back to the events of the early morning, when he had been called from his breakfast to attend Lann. Normally the bravest boy in the house, the little doorkeeper had been reduced to tears after hearing Michael recount the terrible death he would receive if his drug failed to work. 

What in the gods' names had Michael been thinking? It was a question that had occurred to Janus more than once during his years with Michael, and increasingly so for the past week. 

He heard Michael's voice behind him, greeting Lann. Turning swiftly round, Janus came forward and took hold of Michael as the whoremaster reached up to place his cap on a hat-stand already bearing several top-hats. "Where have you been?" asked Janus. "We opened two hours ago!" 

"My errand took longer than I'd anticipated," Michael replied, pulling off his jacket. "Who's here?" 

"The player, to start with. He was lounging at our door before we even opened it." 

It was one of the moments when Janus thought Michael would have smiled, if he ever smiled. "And no doubt Evan was waiting on the other side of the door, ready to pull him inside." 

"It's not something to joke about, Michael. I don't trust Archy – he's going to break Evan's heart." 

Michael raised his eyebrows. "As though that were anything new? Besides, if you don't trust him, why did you let him in?" 

"I could ask you the same. I wouldn't have thought a few puppies would be enough to heal your anger at the trick he played you." 

Michael's gaze wandered back to the front entrance. Standing framed against the grey autumn sky, Lann was politely barring the doorway as he spoke to a new patron. The patron seemed bemused to be quizzed by a youth working at a whorehouse, but he was responding to the questions in a distracted manner while casting glances at the two men in the hall, evidently waiting for one of them to come forward and scold the boy for holding back a patron. 

Michael ignored the patron as he hung his jacket from a hook on the wall. "Do you know why I made Lann our doorkeeper?" he asked in a voice that did not carry far. 

Janus shook his head. 

"I made him our doorkeeper because Lann survived two years on the streets without being beaten and without being bedded against his will. Do you know what the odds are against that? The boy is an astute judge of character. When he allows someone into this house in contradiction to my orders, I've learned to follow his judgment." 

"But not mine?" 

Michael was in the midst of rummaging through his jacket pockets to remove his bill holder. In a house largely made up of former street prostitutes skilled in theft, no valuable could be left lying about. He paused to look at Janus. At the same moment, Lann finally gave way and let pass the patron, who looked puzzled at this unorthodox introduction to a new pleasure house. He nodded in greeting to Janus as he came forward; Janus was still in his morning suit, and the man evidently took him for a fellow patron. 

Janus had no opportunity to correct his impression, for Michael had taken Janus's elbow and was steering him into the office. Once there, Michael proceeded to lock both doors and to close the curtains, as he only did during their most important conversations. 

Janus went over to the speaker's stand, glancing down at the record-book. The volume should not have been lying there; Michael was usually fastidious about locking it away after use because it contained candid notes about the patrons. Janus leafed through the last few entries. Six days had passed since Archy arrived with the puppies, and during that time the entries had been abnormally short, confined to the patron's name and the name and price of the boy. 

Janus looked up and said, "You went to see him, didn't you?" 

Michael picked up his crop from where he had left it, in the darkest corner of the room. "I didn't find him." 

"Michael . . . " 

"He isn't with his family. He isn't at the lodging house where he said he'd be if he didn't stay with his family. I asked the landlord where he'd gone, and the landlord claimed not to know." 

Janus let his fist slam down onto the speaker's stand. It had been a long time since he had done anything like that; he had forgotten how much it hurt. 

Michael turned his face toward Janus. It was blank. 

"Hell-damn you, Michael!" Janus wondered whether, if he shouted loud enough, he could startle an expression onto Michael's face. "I can't believe you're doing this! I can't believe you'd make Hasan submit to you." 

He lowered his voice just in time for the fatal word. Michael did not reply for a moment. His fingers slid over the head of the crop, pinching it, and then grinding it with his fingernails. 

He said, in a voice drained of all anger, "Janus, I couldn't possibly make Hasan do anything he didn't want. He's not a boy any more." 

"But you'll ask him to do it!" 

"Maybe I'll ask him to let me submit to him." Michael's fingers froze suddenly, as though he had hit upon a new idea. No doubt he had. 

Janus gave a disbelieving, humorless laugh. "As though you could." 

He knew, even as he spoke, that he was being unfair to Hasan's feast-day portrayal of Michael. Michael made no mention of this. He said in a voice that was still stripped of anger, "Anyway, it's not a matter of submission. It's a matter of love, as Archy said." 

"Archy!" cried Janus. "Michael, the man's a player! He spends his career deceiving people on the stage! And he's just as good at deceiving people offstage – see how he has won Evan's heart. His entire life is nothing but deception and treachery – and you're going to trust a _player_ with your future?" 

Michael's fingers began to work their way along the leather again, stroking it rhythmically. Finally the whoremaster said, "You've been with your parents today." 

Janus felt heat enter his face. After a while he replied stiffly, "That doesn't make any difference." 

"Of course it does. Whenever you've been with your parents, you spend the next day or two sounding like them. You're intolerant, self-righteous, and unforgiving. I don't blame you," he added as Janus opened his mouth. "They're your parents. It's a wonder you've managed to break away from them as far as you have." 

Janus chewed on the edge of his mustache before saying, "I admit that Archy's somewhat different offstage." 

"Of course he is. Players usually are, when they're not play-acting." 

"But that's the problem! You can never tell when a player is play-acting. He's skilled enough to practice any deception he wants upon you. Michael, please don't start taking your moral cues from Archy. If nothing else, he's Yclau." 

"And I'm a whore," Michael said bluntly. "I hardly need a player's help to turn to corruption – I have examples enough without his influence. Besides, the issue is moot. I told you, I couldn't find Hasan." 

Janus let out his breath slowly and sat down in the nearest chair. His body shook; arguments with Michael always wore him out. "Perhaps his family knows where he is," Janus suggested in order to see whether Michael would follow this lure. 

"I doubt it." 

Michael's voice held an edge of an emotion this time. Janus stared at him a moment before saying, "What do you mean? Wasn't his family glad to have him back?" 

"Oh, yes, they were delighted. They cried and babbled over him – I had this from his father's cousin, who was visiting them at the time and witnessed the reunion. He didn't think they'd ever let Hasan out of their arms." 

"But . . ." 

"But." Michael held the crop up to the dim shaft of light sneaking through the curtains. He bent the whip until it looked as though it would snap in two. His gaze still on the crop, Michael said, "Hasan has three sisters." 

"Yes, he told me." 

"Two are engaged to be married. To mid-class men – the girls are lucky. And after Hasan had been with his family for an hour or two, and he'd told them a bit about his life during the past twelve-odd years, it began to occur to Hasan's family that the girls' fiancés might be somewhat less than delighted to know that they were engaged to the sisters of a whore." 

Janus's mouth had fallen open. "Mercy and Hell, Michael," he said slowly. "You can't mean—" 

"They were joyful to have him back, of course. He must stay with them. In the back room. And perhaps it would be best if he not come out when they had visitors to call – not until he'd learned to talk about something other than prostitution. They'd be glad to teach him proper subjects for conversation. Just as long as he promised not to let slip to anyone that he'd once been a prostitute." 

Janus felt his hands clench upon his trousers. "I was so sure that they'd welcome him back—" 

"He's twenty-one, Janus. His family doesn't remember him, except as an innocent young boy. The man who walked into their house, with tales on his tongue of nights spent in bed with men, is a stranger to them. He frightens them." 

"But it wasn't his fault!" 

Michael released the crop finally; it sprang back into position with a whistle, slightly bent. "He's a whore. Whores don't have happy endings, except in romantic dramas." He turned and walked over to unlock the doors, his hand now limp around the hunting crop. 

o—o—o

Michael was in the kitchen, checking to see how long their supplies in the pantry would last, when Janus found him. 

"Where have you been?" Janus cried. 

Michael opened his mouth to explain about the visit to the Theater Avenue grocer who had abruptly decided – no doubt under pressure from Outram and the other whoremasters – that it was beneath his dignity to continue selling to Michael's House. Janus, though, did not await an answer. 

"Look at you!" he said. "You're filthy!" 

Michael looked down at himself. As a young whore condemned to wear white clothing all the day long, he had mastered various tricks for keeping his suits clean. He could see nothing more on his clothes than the occasional smudge. 

"Your hair," Janus clarified. "And your face and hands. Go and get washed." He pushed Michael in the direction of the door to the alley. 

Michael allowed himself to be pushed. Once outside the house, he turned away from the alley he stood in and unlocked a small gate. This led to a narrow passage between his house and the warehouse next door; he made his way through the passage to the back yard. 

Riverbend Hill ended at Michael's House. Only a small strip of land lay between the house and an abruptly plummeting cliff so steep that the previous owner had never bothered to build a wall against the riverfront. But a high stone wall stood at the right side of the yard, where the house's property faced the cross-street, and the warehouse windows at the left side of the yard were blinded by boards. Michael stripped. 

They had bought this house partly because it had plumbing pipes, but the only rooms in the house that came with plumbing fixtures were the kitchen and the water closet next to Michael's office. He and Janus had never been able to spare the money to fix up a bath room. And so, except in the heart of winter, everyone took their baths here, under the cold-water pump that the previous owner had installed as a nostalgic reminder of earlier, harder times at the mansion. 

Michael was shivering from the autumn chill before he even splashed the pump-water onto his skin. He gasped from the bite, meanwhile wondering what emotion this sensation corresponded to. Disappointment? The novels always talked about the chill of disappointment. He had tried touching Janus one time when he had disappointed his friend, to see whether Janus's skin felt different. It had seemed the same as usual; no doubt the language was metaphorical. 

He let his mind drift back to Janus. He knew why the other man was angry, of course: Janus thought Michael had been searching for Hasan again. In fact, Michael had given up his search two weeks before. It was not simply due to the impossibility of locating a little-known person in a city the size of Vovim's capital. It was because Janus's repeated comments, while never actually descending to threats, had made clear that Michael must choose between Hasan and Janus. 

He didn't know why he must make such a choice. No doubt that was clear to Janus; it usually was. He had to trust Janus, or he would be lost. And that settled the choice. 

The chill of disappointment. There was also the chill of despair. The novels used the language of temperature quite a lot when they were talking about emotions. Perhaps he should have been monitoring his temperature all these years. He briefly toyed with the idea of buying a body thermometer and recording his temperature after every important event. Then he dismissed the idea. No money. 

He could feel the cold seeping beneath his skin now; he tried to finish in a hurry. Along the river, the steamers made their way, tiny as the buildings on the opposite shore, shuttling passengers and goods to and from the neighboring countries. Everyone said that the steamers would die soon, driven out of business by the trains. Vovim's industrial revolution had started late, delayed by an unenlightened monarch in the previous century, whose reign ended in a bloody civil war, followed by a gradual restructuring of society. Michael stood still for a minute, his chill forgotten, looking across at the gilded domes of the King's palace and the temples and the city banks. He tried to imagine a restructuring so great that an ex-whore could find a home upon that shore. 

"Michael?" 

He whirled round. He could feel his heart beating hard, but he could not decide whether it was due to a breakthrough or simply due to his sudden movement. He was too busy staring. 

"What are you doing here?" he asked. 

Hasan closed the yard gate and walked forward. "Janus found me. He asked my landlord where I'd gone." 

Michael continued to stare. " _I_ asked your landlord where you'd gone." 

Hasan gave one of his bright smiles then. "Janus had hold of a gold-tipped walking stick when he asked. For sure that made a difference." He cocked his head to one side. "Janus gave tale you had something important you craved to be on about to me." 

Michael became aware then that he was still standing naked. He was glad that his body was incapable of betraying him. Reaching down toward his abandoned clothes, he said, "Let's go inside." 

o—o—o

When Michael had finished, Hasan was silent for a long time. The young man was staring out the window of his old room, which faced the river. Normally his north-facing window was in shadow at this time of year, but the river angled patterns of light onto his face, so that his skin shone like an autumn leaf under the sun. 

Without looking at Michael, he said, "I was drunk that day." 

Michael wished that Hasan would turn around. He always had a hard time reading Hasan's expression; reading his body alone was next to impossible. He said carefully, "I figured. Or that it was only a final kiss from a boy to his whoremaster. I didn't have mind it was anything else." 

Hasan turned; his face was puzzled. He put his hands behind his back to steady himself against the window ledge and contemplated Michael a moment. Then his expression cleared. "Is Janus hot in heart that you're trussed to a man?" 

"Aren't you?" Michael's mind was sending out a warning of disrupted logic, a pattern that Michael had long ago identified with the word "disconcerted." 

Hasan gave a small, incredulous laugh. "Michael, I'm a whore! For the lasting of my life, no matter what I do, that is what most people will keep in mind about me – that I was once so corrupt that I gave my body over to men. Do you really have mind it matters to me whether people despise me because I slept with a man when I was twenty, or whether they despise me because I slept with a man when I was twenty-one?" 

"Then . . ." He tried not to let his thoughts go any further. Hasan had just compared him to the patrons. That was not what Michael was seeking to achieve. 

Hasan spent another minute examining Michael, who was standing by the door. Michael examined him back. The younger man was wearing the suit Michael had given him, but his collar was torn in two places. The fact that he had not replaced the collar was a bad sign, Michael knew. Whatever else happened during this interview, Michael should check to see whether he could help Hasan in any way concerning his future. 

Hasan settled himself down upon the windowsill, balancing perilously between safety and a long drop. He said quietly, "See now, I have mind I was sixteen when I first began to wake from dreams of you and find I was pressing stiff against you. At start, I was worried you would take note. Then I began to be figuring whether you _had_ taken note. Then I began to be figuring why you didn't give tale to me about it. I had mind that you would at least have me knowing your feelings toward me, if only to make plain you weren't trussed to me that way. . . . It took me some days to figure out that you couldn't have me knowing. It just wasn't possible. I'm right about this, aye?" 

This would be the month, it seemed, for him to learn that everyone knew him better than he had guessed. He checked his face, discovered that it was blank, and tried to decide whether he should change that. "Aye," he heard himself say. 

"I saw you at start when you came to Outram's," Hasan said, his voice still soft amidst the tooting of the steamers passing each other. "You were crying, though Outram hadn't yet gone and touched you. You looked scared. And when I saw you next, after you'd been with Outram . . . Nothing. Nothing to see, except for that wooden strut in your hand, swinging down, and down, and down." 

His mind grasped upon that sentence as the clue he needed. "I'd not do that to you." 

Hasan sighed as he stood up. "Michael, if I had mind it would help you to manacle me and use that weapon you're ever holding . . ." 

Michael looked down. The crop was there. He hadn't noticed it, even when he redressed himself. 

"If I had mind that would help, I'd gladly let you do it," Hasan continued. "But I've seen you after you've been with patrons; doing that has never made difference to you. Has it?" 

"No." His voice sounded far away, like a departing steamer. 

"For all these months since you came of age," said Hasan, "I've been holding for you to realize what Outram drew from you, and to draw it back. To return to what you were before." 

He wondered whether he should explain to Hasan just how long he had been trying to do that. But already Hasan was saying, "It took me some days to realize I was the reason. Me being here gave mind to you of Outram." 

"No!" It was one of the few times at which his thoughts had been able to move quickly enough to tell him the appropriate way to react. A breath that caught short. A raised voice. A tensed body. He ran quickly through this list to be sure that he had chosen the right reactions. Finally he said, with a voice framed to be choked, "Hasan, it's never been like that. You were the only part of my life then that was good." 

Hasan smiled faintly, as he might have smiled at a skilled performance. "Not just me. There was Janus." 

He thought then he had found the key to the mystery he was pursuing, of trying to figure out what response Hasan wanted from him. He said, "What I feel for Janus is entirely different from what I feel for you. Janus is—" 

"Oh, Michael!" Hasan gave something between a laugh and a sob and sat down on the bed. Gazing up at the whoremaster, he said, "Michael, some days giving tale to you is like giving tale to a person from an exotic foreign land. I give tale and tale and tale, and then I find you've not understood half of what I've gone and said. Sweet one, I'm not jealous of Janus. I may have felt a bit resentful-like to him at start, 'cause you were craving his company in a way you'd never craved mine. But after some days, I could see how Janus was changing you. Making you closer to what you'd been. Even if it was only a change at the surface, it was something. I figured from that time on that Janus would ever be the main person in your life, and any love-mates you might have would be second in place." 

It was as though Hasan had looked into Michael's mind and seen what lay there, and shaped what he saw into the words that Michael had been unable to speak. Hasan had always been able to do that. Only Michael's memory of his recent conversations with Janus caused him to reply, "That's not how things go most times in the world." 

"So?" said Hasan with utter simplicity. "Michael, if you've got any hope for finding yourself, it's in Janus. But me, I'm your past. I'm the one who was there when Outram reshaped you." 

"But I—" He struggled to find the words that Hasan had not pulled from his mind. "I love you. I have mind I do." 

Hasan rose and came forward then. As Michael stood motionless at the door, Hasan leaned forward and kissed him on the cheek. 

"And it means riches to me to finally catch tale you saying that," Hasan said softly. "But I can't abide with you if me being here means your words will never be more than 'I have mind.' That would break my heart. The only way I can yield you my love is by yielding you your freedom, as you yielded me mine. If I abide away from you, it may be that you can find yourself." He stepped past Michael and grasped the knob of the door. 

Michael waited for a final comment, but it did not come. Too late, he realized that he should have said something in reply. "I love you and can't live without you." "Everything I have is yours." "Do not spurn me; I will die if you leave me." One of those responses might keep Hasan here; they always worked in the novels. 

But Hasan had already closed the door behind him. Michael stared at the door, envisioning the event Hasan had spoken of, the moment when his heart broke. Michael's mind seemed to accept this as the way events would go if Hasan stayed. He supposed he must defer to Hasan on this, as he did in all matters where he had no experience. 

He went to the window then and looked out upon the shadowed yard, trying to imagine the feeling of a broken heart.


	5. Chapter 5

Hell was cold. He had often thought of that when standing on Michael's House, wondering how hell could possibly be colder than the roof of a three-storey mansion atop the highest hill in Vovim's capital, next to an autumn-chilled river with the wind coming from the north. 

Michael turned his back on the wind. Leaning onto the roof's balcony railing, he could see over the rooftops of the buildings in the southern portion of the city, in the mountains leading to the southern province of Vovim. The moon was only a hook in the sky tonight, and the warm reaches of the south were hidden to him but for the outline of the mountains against the star-pricked sky. 

The cave-mountains of Vovim were where the hermits had once lived, each to his lone self, until they had come together one day, driven by a vision, and performed the world's first play. The caves had been places of pilgrimage for centuries afterwards. Now they lay abandoned. He had heard that the government was negotiating with the railways over a plan to drill a train tunnel through the sacred mountains. 

A scream below drew his attention toward Riverbend. The city guild failed to supply street-lamps here, though an occasional saloon would mark its location by hanging an old-fashioned oil-lamp outside. He couldn't see where the scream had come from. It was too common an event to matter anyway. He turned and looked at the man behind him. 

Janus, wiser than Michael, had come up here garbed in his overcoat, but he was still hugging himself, shivering against the wind. In the faint light of the moon, his eyes seemed imprisoned by shadows. He raised his head finally as Michael asked, "Why did you send Hasan to me?" 

Janus made a noncommital gesture, staring down at the ground as the wind whipped his overcoat again and again. "I kept thinking of what you had said: 'Whores don't have happy endings.' And I realized that the only time I'd ever heard you speaking with what seemed like happiness was when you told me of your love for Hasan. I decided I didn't have the right to keep that from you – nor from Hasan, if he wanted it. He's no longer a boy, needing an adult to protect him against danger." He raised his eyes. Usually hazel, they seemed to have been swallowed up by the night. "Besides," he said in a low voice, "I wasn't sure of my motives for keeping you apart." 

Michael said nothing, just gazed back at him. This was one of the things he valued most about Janus – that Michael need never agonize over whether he was correct in thinking Janus wrong, nor whether he should disobey Janus's wishes as a result. Inevitably, invariably, Janus would identify his own mistakes. And in a fashion utterly uncharacteristic of his class, he would confess to his error. 

Janus's mind, it seemed, had moved forward, for when he spoke again, he was less tentative than before. "I don't think you should let what Hasan said trouble you. I tried to explain to him that you found it harder to express your feelings than most men do, but he doesn't seem to have understood. He thinks that, just because you're less open about your feelings than he is, that means the feelings are missing from you. He ought to know better; you show your feelings throughout the day, even if less often than the rest of us . . ." 

His voice trailed off. Michael assumed that it was because he had not given the proper response. That was usually the case, and the problem could usually be resolved by figuring out which response Janus wanted him to give. This time, though, he let his face remain relaxed in its natural manner. It was so very nice not to have to figure out which paint he should wear. 

"Michael?" Janus's voice sounded anxious. 

Michael looked beyond him to the northern shore, glowing softly with gaslight. Theater Avenue was a bright gorge of light dividing the mid-class district to the northwest from the Parkside district to the northeast. The avenue would be thronged with business at this time of night: saloon-keepers trying to attract customers by shouting out their offerings, female whores standing outside of the houses they represented, an occasional boy-whore installed upon a chilly balcony to give a sampling of the offerings inside, blind beggars reaching out their hands and enduring casual kicks from strollers who found them annoying. And players. Always players, wandering the streets between performances and attracting small knots of admirers who mistook their stage personas for what they were. 

"I was thinking," Michael said, "of what we were saying about players being different when they're offstage. And how it's hard to tell when they're play-acting." 

When he finally looked back again, Janus had moved into the shadow of the glass dome that rose above the level of the rest of the rooftop. Michael could not see his face. But he could hear the catch in Janus's voice as the other man said, "How . . . When did you learn to play-act?" 

Michael joined Janus in the shadow. It was just as chilly here; they were east of the dome, which did not shield them from the wind off the water. "When I met you," he said. "That was when I began to realize that something was wrong." 

o—o—o

He had vaguely known until that time that he was different from the others. The others made twistings with their faces and sudden gestures with their bodies and raised their voices at odd moments and even let water flow from their eyes for no apparent reason. He had a faint memory that he had once done this too. But that was a long time ago, and he was not inclined to think about it. Hasan was the only whore he ever spoke to, except to exchange information on bed techniques, and Hasan never seemed to care that his fellow whore was different from the others. 

Not that he cared what Hasan thought. That was a matter of indifference to him as well. 

Then came the day when he slipped out of the whorehouse, as he had learned to do some months before. He would come back at the end of the day; he had learned from some of the other boys that life outside the whorehouse could be far worse than inside. Besides, he had no reason to run away, other than the dark times when he was dragged into Outram's bed. The other whores suffered under Outram too; he supposed that everyone's life was like this, even the patrons'. 

He had always walked along Theater Avenue before; that street encompassed his full image of the world. Today, for reasons he did not understand, he wandered to the east and soon left behind the lively but unruly street that was his home. The quiet he encountered seemed odd; the buildings and yards were abnormally clean. The people he passed, though they ignored him or gave him furtive glances, spoke gently with one another. He began to feel as though he had wandered into a dream he had never experienced before. 

Then he met the boy. And only a short time of throwing a ball back and forth with the boy, and a few friendly remarks from the boy, made him realize that he had completely misinterpreted his own life, and that the world was very different from what he had thought. 

Determined to see whether he could break the spell, he took the boy to his house. Once there, he had no idea what to do with the boy. They were in his room now, but he did not want to treat the boy as he treated his patrons. Still trying to figure out what he should do, he undid the first button in preparation to taking his clothes off. 

His hand was stayed by the look on the boy's face. The look stayed in Michael's memory for years. It was like the look that Hasan's face held after he emerged from his times with Outram. That was the moment, Michael supposed, when he first realized that he was not simply different from the others – he was different in a manner that could drive the others away from him. He hadn't considered this before. The patrons came and went as they wished, and the other whores were imprisoned as he was. But this boy . . . This boy could choose to stay away from him. And suddenly Michael was quite sure he wanted to see the boy again. 

Surprisingly, the boy wanted to see him as well. They met again, at first openly; then, after a disastrous encounter with Janus's parents, they met furtively, like clandestine love-mates in the novels Janus sometimes spoke about. Despite this evidence of Janus's willingness to remain friends, Michael was concerned. Moments kept occurring when Janus would suddenly say, "Why don't you smile?" Or, "Aren't you angry about that?" Several times Janus's face looked as though someone had been beating him. 

Michael set out to solve the mystery. He knew that "angry" referred to a certain type of facial change: the lips curved down, the brow drew low. Sometimes this was accompanied by clenched fists. Michael watched Outram closely; the whoremaster was the most obvious model for anger in his house. Then, when Michael met with Janus again, he tried to be angry for him. 

It was a failed experiment. Michael quickly discovered that it was not enough to know how to be angry; apparently he had to be angry in response to certain events. This knowledge made sense. Sometimes, if he misjudged his patrons and went further than the patrons would permit him, the men would grow angry because of the undesired pain. He supposed that Janus was expecting him to grow angry in response to some undesired blow, but since Janus never hit him, Michael could not follow whatever the pattern was. 

So he borrowed Janus's novels. 

Janus had already explained to him that novels were like plays, except that you were able to witness the thoughts of the characters. Even Michael knew what a play was; the boys at his house were accustomed to performing small dramas when Outram wasn't watching. So Michael settled down with the borrowed novel – he was mildly surprised to learn that he could read – and set out to figure out which woundings caused people to decide to be angry. 

It was then that Michael experienced a jolting of his mind similar to the jolting his body had undergone on the occasion Outram brought home a new toy to try upon him. "Shock" was the word Michael later discovered for this. It was the shock of learning that he had been blind all his life, or had been deaf all his life – one of his senses had been missing, and he had not known it. 

The novels made this clear. "When I woke up the next morning it was to find a weight of pain lying heavy upon my heart – pain for something which, alas! no longer existed save in the memory of his words." Pain upon his heart? The only time Michael had felt pain was when Outram had made use of his body. He had never experienced pain simply from hearing words, much less from remembering words. Something was missing here – something very large that all other people in the world possessed. 

He looked at Hasan again with new eyes. Yes, Hasan had this missing quality as well; the other boy would cry sometimes, long after the pain in his body should have healed. Hasan knew what this secret part was that Michael was missing. 

Michael did not ask him. It had occurred to him that, if he told Hasan or Janus or anyone else the truth about himself, he might be kicked out of the way, as the blind beggars were. Once that would not have mattered to him, but now he knew Janus. 

And so he set out to become a player. Maybe, he thought, if he play-acted well enough, the feelings he was missing would come to him. He thought, perhaps, he had known them once. 

o—o—o

"I've never been able to manage smiles," he said. "I can do frowns, but smiles seem to take too many muscles. I've practiced in mirrors, and the smile always comes out as a grimace. I can do laughter, though – that's easy. It's just a matter of making a lot of short breaths and voicing them as you breathe. But smiles are harder—" 

He stopped. He had noticed that Janus was no longer listening to him. The other man's head was bowed, and his shoulders were shaking. Michael ran through his file of emotions associated with shaking, and then he realized that Janus was crying. 

Catastrophes always came unheralded to Michael. He would be talking in a normal manner to a boy about what sort of death he had been saved from, and the next thing he knew, Lann would burst out sobbing, and Michael would have to fetch Janus to learn what he had done. This sort of thing happened several times a day, which was why he tried to keep Janus as close at hand as possible. If Michael paid careful enough attention, he could catch Janus's signal and stop himself before doing the damage. 

Never before, though, had Michael created a disaster this great. He stared at Janus, at a loss over what to do. Though Janus's feelings were close to the surface, certain customs of his class he always adhered to: he had never cried in Michael's presence. The closest he had come to it was on the day they discovered Pye deeply dosed with sweetweed and had been unsure whether they could pull the boy back to life. On that occasion, Janus's chin had quivered. Now Michael wasn't sure whether Janus would welcome an embrace, as Hasan would have under such circumstances. 

Or whether, in fact, Janus would welcome Michael at all. Michael tried to retrace what had happened. He had told Janus the truth finally. Janus was crying. He had not cried when Michael started to take off his clothes ten years before. Now he was crying. This was worse than then. He had hurt Janus even more than the first time. 

Janus lifted his face; the moonlight was just strong enough to reflect on the tears there. In a choked voice, Janus said, "You did that. You did all that work for my sake. And I never knew." He took half a dozen steps forward, placed his arms around Michael, and kissed him on the cheek. 

Michael stood frozen. The world had just turned upside down, and he had no idea how to right it. 

Gentlemen did not kiss. They did not kiss their women-whores, they did not kiss their boy-whores, and they most certainly did not kiss their friends. Michael had heard a rumor that gentlemen kissed their wives in the privacy of their bedrooms, but that was beyond his knowledge. All he knew was that Janus disliked being touched during any but the most emotional moments, and then never more than an arm round the shoulder. 

Janus had buried his face upon Michael's shoulder after the kiss. Michael decided that Janus could not object to an arm round the shoulder again, so he tried this. After a minute more, Janus pulled back with a muttered apology, as though he had been hitting Michael instead of embracing him. Janus fished inside his pockets until he found a handkerchief. 

He wiped his eyes, blew his nose, stuffed the handkerchief back into his pocket, and asked, "What will you do now? Find Hasan?" 

Michael was still trying to decide whether he ought to kiss Janus back. Now he realized that Janus had flitted ahead of him again, and that he was supposed to act as though nothing had happened. 

Michael shook his head. "Hasan has led too hard a life to give himself over to a man with no heart. I should have thought of that beforehand. No, I'll let Hasan seek his happiness elsewhere." 

"So that's the end of it? Nothing has changed?" The disappointment in Janus's voice was clear. 

Michael stared over Janus's shoulder toward the chill north. The bright lights of Theater Avenue twinkled, the wind now so brisk that it was penetrating the cracks next to the glass walls of the gas-lamps. Michael hoped that Hasan had found shelter tonight. Perhaps shelter in someone's arms? His mind jumped back from the thought. 

After a minute he said, "You remember when we argued last year about whether I should make Lann a whore." 

"Yes," replied Janus, soft under the wind. 

"I thought at the time that you were being entirely unreasonable," Michael continued. "It seemed obvious to me that the sensible thing to do was to get this business on a solid financial footing, and then I could bring about the reforms I wanted to bring to whoremastering. I'd be able to release Lann from his whoring then, and he'd have a much better chance of survival than if I'd rejected his offer to continue his whoring and run the risk of having this business fail early on." 

Janus's voice was hesitant. "I can see . . . Yes, I can see how you thought that. It's certainly reasonable. But Michael, this wasn't a matter of reason. Lann had been badly hurt, and he was still in pain—" 

"Yes," Michael interrupted. "But that's just it, you see. I didn't realize he was in pain. He hadn't been with a patron for over a day, and the last patron he'd served hadn't entered him roughly. I wouldn't have been in pain in such a situation, and I didn't realize that he was talking to me about present pain, not about things that had hurt him in the past. I didn't know what he was feeling, because I can't feel." 

Janus was standing close to him still; the expression on his face made Michael worry that he had slipped again. Nothing he had said should have caused Janus's expression to split apart like that. But Janus did not reply, so Michael added, "I want to know what it is to feel. And Hasan is right; I haven't done as much work as I should have to recover what I was. For years, it has been automatic – someone says something or does something, and I translate it into my mind as a feeling that needs to be interpreted, and then I figure out what I should do in return. It's simply play-acting – good enough to fool you, but it's as shallow as Archy's words about love. I need to know the truth behind the play. I need to know for the boys' sake, so that I won't keep hurting them." 

He hesitated. He wanted to touch Janus now, but if he was wrong, this might be the mistake that drove Janus out of this cold wind and away from him. So he only said, "Will you help me?" 

The street-lamps twinkled; the moon clawed its way higher; the cold wind remained. But he no longer noticed the chill. Janus had reached forward and taken his hand.

**Author's Note:**

> [Illustrations](http://duskpeterson.com/shareduniverses/michaelshousegallery.htm) by [glockgal](https://archiveofourown.org/users/glockgal/profile) for the _MAS-Zine_ publication of the story.
> 
> _Whipster_ editors: [Remy Hart](https://remyheart.livejournal.com/profile), [Briony James](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hippediva/pseuds/Hippediva), and Theresa.
> 
> _Whipster_ additional editorial assistance: Anne Blue, Kenovay, and Nigel Puerasch.
> 
> _Whipster_ costume consultant: [Elizabeth McCollum](http://victorianbohemia.blogspot.com/).
> 
> [Publication history](http://duskpeterson.com/cvhep.htm#offstage).
> 
> "Offstage" was originally published, with minor differences, in the April 2004 issue of _MAS-Zine_.
> 
> The novel passage quoted in Chapter Five is adapted from Dorothy Richardson's fictionalized memoir, [_The Long Day: The Story of a New York Working Girl_](http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/31118) (1905).
> 
> This story was originally published at [duskpeterson.com](http://duskpeterson.com). The story is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Copyright © 2004, 2006, 2008, 2012, 2013, 2020 Dusk Peterson. Permission is granted for fanworks inspired by this story. Please credit Dusk Peterson and duskpeterson.com for the original story.


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